Before storm season starts, do the free 15-minute check that could save thousands in damage

Most people only look at their house when a storm warning pops up on the phone. They check the roof, glance at the gutters, and figure the windows will hold. The one place almost nobody checks is the exact place where the worst damage actually starts. And by the time the sky goes dark, it’s too late to fix it.

The strange part is how simple the fix is. It costs nothing. It takes about 15 minutes. Most homeowners could do it this weekend and never think about it again all year. And yet almost no one does it before the season starts. They wait for the warning, panic-run through it in the last hour, and miss the parts that actually matter.

What follows is the check itself, why it matters more than the roof, and why the number the insurance industry uses for “serious hazard” is a lot smaller than you’d think.

Current image: A two-story beige house with a dark front door sitting under heavy gray storm clouds.

Table of Contents

The storm damage that costs the most usually isn’t caused by the wind itself

When people picture storm damage, they picture a roof peeling off or a tree crashing through the living room. Those things happen. They just aren’t the most common way homes get wrecked.

Damaging thunderstorm winds make up half of all severe weather reports in the lower 48 states, more than tornadoes, according to NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory. The National Weather Service calls a thunderstorm severe once wind gusts hit 58 mph (93 km/h) or hail reaches an inch (2.5 cm) across. That’s not rare. It’s the everyday version of a bad storm, the kind most parts of the country see every single year.

Broken tree branches and a fallen trash can scattered across a wet residential street after a storm.

At those wind speeds, the wind itself usually isn’t what breaks the window. Something else does. Something the wind picked up first.

The Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety runs a full-scale wind lab in South Carolina that can blow 130 mph (209 km/h) winds at real, full-size homes. They’ve been studying this same pattern for years. Their most consistent finding: the homes that lose the most in a windstorm usually aren’t beaten by the wind. They’re beaten by whatever the wind picked up first and threw at them.

That’s the part of storm damage that almost never makes the news. It doesn’t get a name. It just quietly costs homeowners thousands of dollars a year in claims that were completely preventable.

Why one broken window can turn into a huge repair bill

Once one window breaks in a storm, everything changes.

The storm isn’t outside anymore. Wind gets inside the house, pushes up on the ceiling and roof from below, and now the roof is much more likely to fail too. What started as a broken pane can end as a caved-in ceiling. That’s how a mid-size storm turns into a five-figure insurance claim.

The insurance side is worth spelling out. A broken window from a storm often triggers your hurricane or windstorm deductible (that’s the amount you pay out of pocket before insurance covers anything), and in coastal states that can run into thousands of dollars, or thousands of euros or pounds for readers overseas. And if whatever broke the window came from your yard and it hit your neighbor’s window or car, you may end up with a very awkward conversation, and depending on where you live, a liability question your policy doesn’t cover the way you’d hope.

There’s another cost most people don’t think about. After a big storm passes, contractors get booked out for weeks and materials get scarce. A window that would have cost a few hundred dollars (a few hundred euros or pounds) to replace in April can cost three times that in September, if you can find someone to install it at all.

So the real question isn’t whether the wind is going to hit your area. It’s whether the wind, when it gets there, is going to find anything worth throwing.

The number that changes how you look at your own yard

This is where the whole story turns.

Florida has one of the strictest building codes in the country for windows in storm zones. To get certified for hurricane areas, a window has to survive being hit by a 9-pound (4 kg) piece of 2×4 lumber fired at 34 mph (55 km/h). That’s the speed the industry treats as a serious hazard.

Read that number again. 34 mph. Not 100. Not 74. Thirty-four.

A tan plastic chair, stacked terracotta pots, a coiled garden hose, and a gas grill on a cracked concrete patio.

Now look at your yard.

That patio chair weighs more than 9 pounds. That ceramic pot near the door definitely does. So does a full trash bin, a folded umbrella, a rolled-up hose, a bag of potting soil, a small grill. Every one of those things clears the hazard bar the second the wind hits 34 mph. And a severe thunderstorm starts at 58.

That’s what’s actually breaking windows in most storms. Not “debris” in some vague sense. Not tree branches from far away. The stuff sitting in your own yard, and your neighbor’s yard, that nobody thought to move.

The hurricane-science team at the University of Rhode Island puts it plainly: small items left outside make the damage far worse than the wind alone. The wind is just the mover. The stuff in your yard is what actually does the damage.

The 15-minute check, step by step

The University of Florida’s IFAS Extension, FEMA, and Ready.gov all say the same thing: move lawn furniture, grills, decorative items, potted plants, and toys to a garage, shed, or secure storage before a storm. Left outside, they become flying missiles in high winds.

Stacked tan plastic patio chairs, a folded umbrella, and potted plants inside an unfinished garage with exposed studs.

Do this once this weekend, before the first watch of the season:

Walk the yard and list everything not bolted down. Patio chairs and tables. Umbrellas. Trash and recycling bins. Potted plants (terracotta and ceramic count too). Grills. Kids’ toys, sandboxes, small trampolines. Garden tools. Hose reels. Bird feeders, wind chimes, flags. Door mats. Decorative rocks. Solar lights. Anything a strong adult could pick up.
Give every item a storm-day home. Best is a garage, shed, or covered breezeway. Next best is against a windowless interior wall of the house, on the ground and tied together. A narrow side alley works if items can’t roll out. Decide the spot in advance.
Anchor what won’t fit inside. Grills, larger patio sets, and rain barrels can be strapped to a deck post or fence post set in concrete using ratchet straps or heavy-duty bungees. A few dollars if you don’t own straps. Not free, but close.
Fold and secure umbrellas. A closed patio umbrella still catches wind. Bring it inside or lay it flat and weigh it down.
Push-test the fence. Firm push on each wooden panel. If it moves more than an inch or two, it’s a projectile waiting to happen, and fixing it isn’t a same-day job. This is exactly why you’re doing the walkthrough before the season.
Photograph everything. Walk the yard on video with your phone once it’s set up the way it’ll stay all season. Time-stamped video is what an insurance adjuster wants.
Write the plan down. One index card taped inside a garage cabinet or pantry door: what moves where, in what order, when a watch drops. You’ll forget by the third storm. The card won’t.