Hurricane season in SW Florida runs June 1 through November 30. Waiting until a named storm enters the Gulf to think about IT continuity is waiting too long. This is the playbook we walk through with every managed client each May, and the one we wish every non-managed operation had.
01Pre-season: May check-list.
Before the first Atlantic wave, every operation should verify three things: backups are current and restorable, cloud replicas are healthy, and the people who need remote access actually have it configured and tested.
We run "fire drill" restores for every managed client in May, pulling a VM from immutable cloud storage, spinning it up in a hot-site region, and verifying logins work. If the restore fails in May, we have six months to fix it. If it fails in September, we have hours.
- Immutable cloud backup verified and tested
- Hot-site or DR replica health checked
- Remote access (VPN, RDP, SaaS) tested from a non-office network
- Phone-system failover destinations confirmed
- Emergency contact tree updated
02Named storm in the Gulf: 72-hour window.
Once a storm enters the Gulf with a projected SW Florida landfall, the clock starts. At 72 hours out, we verify power backup, shut down non-critical on-prem systems that don't have UPS coverage, and confirm every employee has what they need to work from a safe location.
The phone system is often overlooked. A cloud-hosted PBX with a documented failover plan, ring patterns, voicemail greetings, after-hours routing, means your practice or firm stays reachable even if the physical office loses power for two weeks.
0324 hours out: cutover.
One day before projected landfall, the office closes and systems cut over. Production workloads either run from the cloud (for cloud-first operations) or from a replicated hot-site (for on-prem-heavy operations).
Staff work from home, a temporary location, or out of market. Phones route to mobile or a call-center overflow. Email and collaboration run uninterrupted from Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.
04After the storm: the return.
When the office is safe to re-enter, the order of operations matters. Inspect physical infrastructure before powering up, water intrusion, rodent damage, loose cables. Check UPS battery health (heat kills batteries). Re-seat rack gear. Verify network uplinks before bringing servers online.
Then cut services back from DR to production in a controlled, scheduled way, not all at once, not during business hours, and with a documented rollback plan.
05What changes about storm IT in 2026.
The biggest shift over the last few years: cloud-first operations barely notice storms any more. A practice running M365, a cloud EHR, a cloud PBX, and laptops for every clinician can close the physical office and keep the business running from anywhere with power and connectivity.
If your 2025 hurricane response involved "wait and hope," 2026 is the year to upgrade the plan.
Ian in ’22 and Helene/Milton in ’24 were the stress tests. Managed clients who had done the May dry run were back online inside 48 hours; the ones who had not waited two weeks. Hurricane Readiness Review is $3,600 fixed fee, booked March–May, delivered by the first week of June. Do it once and the routine carries forward every year.