Getting a Houston Yard Ready for Hurricane Season

Hurricane season runs from the start of June to the end of November, and almost all of the yard work that matters happens well before a storm has a name. Most of it is inspection rather than construction, and the parts that are construction cannot be arranged in the two days after a forecast turns.

This is the order to work through, from highest stakes down.

Trees: the highest stakes in the yard

Trees cause most of the serious storm damage to houses, cars, fences, and power connections. They are also the item where advance work makes the biggest difference.

Walk the property and look up. Deadwood still held in the canopy, split or included forks, heavy one-sided limbs, limbs overhanging the roof or the driveway, and any lean that has changed are all worth an arborist’s opinion before June. Structural pruning to reduce wind load is legitimate and effective work.

Topping a tree is not. Cutting back into large limbs to make a tree shorter produces dense, weakly attached regrowth that fails more readily in the next storm, and the tree never recovers its original structure. There is more on working around mature trees in landscaping around big oak trees.

Drainage, while it is still dry

Drainage work has to be done in advance by definition. During a storm it is too late, and immediately afterwards everyone in the city is calling the same contractors.

• Clear every area drain, channel drain, and grate. A drain full of live oak leaves is the same as no drain at all.
• Flush the gutters and check that each downspout still discharges away from the foundation rather than into a bed beside it.
• Look for the low spots that held water after the last heavy rain and note whether anything has been done about them.
• Check that a French drain or dry creek bed still has a clear outfall, and that nothing has been planted or built across it.
• Make sure new landscaping has not raised the grade against the house.

The signs to look for through the year are covered in signs your yard has a drainage problem, and our drainage solutions page covers what each fix involves.

Structures, and what they are anchored to

Pergolas, patio covers, and shade sails all transfer significant wind load into their posts and footings. Whether that matters in a given storm comes down to how they were built, which is not something to discover during one.

What to check yourself: posts for movement or rot at the base, visible bolts and connectors for looseness or corrosion, panels and fasteners for anything already lifting, and the flashing where an attached cover meets the house. That joint is where wind-driven water gets in, and it is also the connection most likely to be stressed.

Removable shade fabric and sails should come down ahead of a named storm — they are the parts that catch wind hardest and the easiest to take out of the equation. There is more on what makes these structures last in how long should a patio roof last?

Loose objects, which cause most of the broken glass

Every unsecured item in a yard is a projectile in a hurricane, and this is the fastest part of the checklist to act on when a storm is coming.

Furniture, cushions, umbrellas, planters, grill covers, garden tools, decorative stone, loose pavers, hose reels, bird baths, and anything on a plant stand should go inside a garage or be secured. Umbrellas in particular: closed and left in a base is not secured.

Planting and containers

Newly planted trees benefit from staking checked before the season, and from having their stakes removed once they are properly established, since a stake that has been left too long creates its own failure point.

Move containers to a sheltered position or lay them down. Terracotta and glazed pots break and become debris; large planters can move further than people expect in saturated ground.

The week before a named storm

By the time a storm has a name and a track, the tree work and drainage improvements are no longer available to you. What remains is a short, physical list, and it is worth writing down once so it can be worked through without thinking.

1. Bring in or lay down everything loose: cushions, umbrellas, planters, toys, tools, the grill, and anything on a wall.
2. Clear gutters, downspouts, area drains, and the grate over any sump. A blocked drain in a storm is the same as no drain.
3. Photograph the yard, the structures, and the roofline for your own records before anything happens.
4. Fill fuel and charge batteries for the equipment you will want afterwards, and check that any generator you own runs.
5. Turn off automatic irrigation, which will otherwise water a flooded yard for a week.
6. Move vehicles off low ground, and away from the largest trees.
7. Lower pool water slightly if heavy rain is forecast, and shut down pool equipment if flooding is a real possibility.

Power, pumps, and pool equipment

Anything electrical in the yard deserves a thought before landfall. Pool pumps, sump pumps, low-voltage transformers, and outdoor kitchen appliances are all exposed to both water and to the surge that arrives when power returns.

Know where the breakers are for each of them, and use them rather than unplugging things in the rain. If a sump is part of your drainage, it is worth knowing in advance whether it has a backup — a sump on grid power only is a sump that stops working in precisely the conditions it exists for.

Generators, if you run one, belong well away from the house and never under a covered patio: exhaust collects under a roof. That is a safety point rather than a landscaping one, but it is the one most often got wrong in a yard.

Keep a record of what is in the yard

The yard is the part of a property nobody has documentation for, and it is the part that gets damaged first. A folder — even a phone album — with photographs of the structures, the planting, and the hardscape in good condition, plus the invoices and specifications for anything substantial, is worth having before you need it.

Take the photographs annually, in good light, and include wide shots that establish the whole yard as well as close-ups of anything of value. It costs ten minutes a year and it is the difference between describing what was there and showing it.

After the storm, in order

1. Treat any downed line as live and stay away from it. Nothing in the yard is more urgent than that.
2. Check drainage function first, before the next band of rain arrives — a blocked drain now is a flooded area in an hour.
3. Look up for hangers: broken limbs lodged in a canopy that have not yet fallen.
4. Inspect structures for loosened fasteners, shifted panels, and flashing pulled away from the house.
5. Rinse salt spray and debris off hardscape and turf, and clear leaf litter out of turf and drains.
6. Photograph damage before clearing it, for insurance.

None of this makes a yard storm-proof, and nothing here is a substitute for the plans that matter more — where the family goes, what the insurance covers. It is simply the set of small jobs that reliably reduces how much of a Gulf storm becomes your problem afterwards.