Blog > Hurricanes in Orlando: What an Inland Storm Actually Looks Like
If you're looking at Orlando and the hurricanes are the thing giving you pause, here's the short version: what happens here is not what you've seen on television. Orlando sits about an hour inland, and the footage that scares people — the reporter leaning into the wind, the roof peeling off, water where a street used to be — is coastal footage. Storm surge does not drive an hour inland.
That's not the same as saying it's nothing. I've lived in Orlando since 2010, and in that time four named storms have actually reached where I live. I want to walk you through what those days looked like, how often they come, and the two things about any specific address you can look up for free before you ever make an offer. I come out of teaching, so I'd rather walk you through a thing than talk you into it.
Two different storms are wearing the same name
There's the TV Storm — the one on the news, the one on the coast, the one that earns every second of that footage. And there's the Tuesday Storm, which is what Orlando usually gets: a long grey afternoon, sticks in the yard, and the power out for a few days.
The mistake almost everyone makes when they're deciding whether Florida is livable is planning their life around the first one when they'll be living in the second. They're both real. They just happen in different places.
How often does this actually happen?
This is the question I'd be asking, so here's the real answer from my own sixteen years.
My first six years here, nothing — and that wasn't me being smart about where I bought. Florida went eleven straight years without a hurricane making landfall anywhere in the state, from Wilma in October 2005 to Hermine in September 2016. I moved into the middle of that stretch.
Then Matthew brushed the coast in October 2016 and we caught the edge of it. Irma came up the middle of the state in September 2017 — peak gusts in Orange County ran 53 to 70 mph, with rainfall from 11.80 inches in Apopka to 17.44 inches in Christmas. Then five quiet years. Then 2022 handed us two in one season, Ian in September and Nicole in November. Then Milton in October 2024.
Sixteen years, five named storms, four that actually reached my house. And I'm not going to round that in my own favor: two of those four carried far more water than a normal afternoon. Ian put 10 to 15 inches of rain across the Orlando area in about a day, with isolated totals of 16 to 21 inches along the I-4 corridor through Orange, Seminole and Volusia counties. That is not a quiet Tuesday, and pretending otherwise would be useless to you. For what it's worth, my own house came through Ian the same way it came through Irma — nothing but the power, and not until after it had passed.
What the day itself is like
The first time one pointed at Orlando I had a plan, and the plan was to leave. Then I went outside and nobody on my street was going anywhere. They were in their driveways talking about what they were going to cook.
What follows is a long grey afternoon where, mostly, nothing happens. People throw hurricane parties — that's the actual phrase, you'll hear it — and the day turns into games and a movie until the lights go out. In two houses now, I've only ever lost power after the storm passed, once it was down to a breeze and light rain. When it does go, it's four or five days. That's the number, and that's the real emergency: not danger, logistics.
The part that actually does damage is water, not wind
We don't get surge inland. What we get is rain with nowhere to go, and there are streets in Orange and Seminole counties that flooded in Ian that don't normally flood.
So here's the single most useful thing in this article, and it's a shopper's problem rather than a homeowner's: your homeowners policy does not cover flood. Not here, not anywhere. Flood is a separate policy you buy on purpose, and you want it priced before you make an offer, not after you own the place and the quote surprises you.
The dangerous day is the day after
The morning after, the sun comes out and everybody goes outside, and that's when this actually gets hazardous — because the day after feels finished. Two things do most of the harm, and neither one of them is wind.
The first is generators. They are one of the leading causes of carbon monoxide deaths after a storm, and one has to run outside, twenty feet from the house, never in the garage with the door up. That is not a hypothetical here: two days after Irma, a generator running inside a converted garage in Orange County killed three people in one household and sent four more to the hospital. It was powering a refrigerator — which is the exact reason I bought mine.
The second is water and cars. More than half of flood drownings happen in vehicles, because it takes just 12 inches of rushing water to carry away most cars — and twelve inches does not look like anything from the driver's seat. Downed lines are the same idea. You can go outside. You just can't go outside like nothing happened.
Two things you can check on any address, for free
Everything above is about Orlando in general. What actually decides your outcome is the specific house, and both of the things that decide it are public.
- The evacuation zone. Florida runs a free lookup called Know Your Zone — you type in an address and it tells you the zone. Evacuation zones exist inland too, not just on the coast, and if an order comes for yours you take it seriously every time.
- The flood map. The FEMA Flood Map Service Center is the official public source for flood hazard information, and it's searchable by address at no cost.
Run both on a house you're only thinking about, months before it's yours. It takes about five minutes, and it is a great deal easier to do before you've fallen for the house.
Where this reassurance stops
Everything I've described assumes a concrete block house, well inland. If you're looking at a mobile or manufactured home, this is a different storm than the one I'm describing, and the answer there is to take the order seriously every single time. Construction type is listed on the property details — it's worth knowing which one you're looking at before you get attached.
The bottom line
Four storms in sixteen years that reached my house. The worst of them was a lot of water and four days without electricity. The rest of it was a grey afternoon, a yard full of sticks, and a weekend of cleanup — followed by what is usually the nicest week of the year, because the air afterward feels scrubbed and every bug in the county got blown into the next one.
That's not "hurricanes aren't a big deal." It's that the thing you're actually planning for is a known quantity with a short list of preparations, rather than the thing you saw on television. If you know what you need to do, this is a place you can be comfortable living.
If you're weighing a move to Central Florida and you want clear, no-pressure guidance — including which parts of town flood and which ones don't — I'd love to help. Schedule a free 30-minute call. No pitch.
Sources
- The Weather Channel — Florida's eleven-year hurricane drought, Wilma (Oct 2005) to Hermine (Sept 2016)
- NWS Melbourne — Hurricane Irma damage survey, Orange County wind and rainfall (Oct 2017)
- National Hurricane Center — Tropical Cyclone Report, Hurricane Irma (AL112017)
- OUC — Irma outage and restoration figures (Sept 2017)
- News 6 / ClickOrlando — Hurricane Ian rainfall and Orlando's wettest fall on record (Dec 2022)
- NWS Melbourne — Hurricane Milton event summary, east central Florida (Oct 2024)
- WFTV — Orange County generator carbon monoxide deaths, two days after Irma (Sept 2017)
- National Weather Service — Turn Around Don't Drown, 12 inches of moving water
- FEMA / National Flood Insurance Program — flood is not covered by homeowners insurance
- Florida Division of Emergency Management — Know Your Zone evacuation lookup
- FEMA Flood Map Service Center — official public flood hazard information
Chad Gibson, LLC · SL3471542 · Dreamtown Homes Team · LPT Realty · Licensed in Florida
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