Hurricane Season in the Big Bend: Sort the Car Out Before the Power Goes
People who move here from somewhere flatter and drier are usually surprised by the same thing: it is not the wind that reorganizes your week, it is the outage afterwards. Tallahassee is a city under an enormous tree canopy, and when a real storm comes through, the lights go out across most of it at once — and stay out.
This City Loses Power All at Once
Three separate times in the last decade the outage has been close to citywide. Hurricane Hermine in 2016 took power from roughly 80 percent of the city proper. Hurricane Michael in 2018 left about 95 percent of Leon County dark. Hurricane Helene in September 2024 did it again — around 80 percent of Tallahassee out, roughly 145,000 customers at the peak. And the May 2024 tornado outbreak, which is not a hurricane at all, put three tornadoes across Gadsden and Leon in one morning and had crews still restoring power eight days later.
The part that matters for your car: when that happens, the repair shops are dark too. A garage with no power cannot run a lift, a compressor, or a diagnostic scanner. And a car sitting in your driveway with a dead battery cannot get to one anyway.
What to Do Before It Arrives
- •Test the battery, not just the fuel. A battery that has been through a Tallahassee summer is the single most likely thing to fail you afterwards.
- •Fill the tank early. Pumps need electricity. Once the power goes, so do most stations.
- •Check the tires, including the spare. Post-storm roads are full of debris, and a flat is a much bigger problem when nothing is open.
- •Look up. If you park under a big limb, and most of us do somewhere, move the car for the duration if you have anywhere better to put it.
- •Clear the cowl drains. Leaf litter under the base of the windshield backs water up into the cabin, and this city produces a lot of leaf litter.
Afterwards: The Car That Sat for a Week
The most common call we get once a storm has passed is a car that has not moved in five or six days and now will not start. A parked car still draws a trickle of current for its computers and alarm, and a battery already worn down by summer heat frequently cannot absorb a week of that. Sometimes a jump brings it back. Often the battery is finished, and a jump only gets you as far as the next time you switch the engine off.
The other one is water. Cars that sat under trees pick up sap, leaf mat and small limb strikes, and standing water finds any drain that is already blocked. It is worth a proper look under the hood once things are back to normal, even if the car started fine.
Car Would Not Start After the Storm?
We come to your driveway across Tallahassee, Leon County and the Big Bend. Test, jump, or replace on the spot — no tow, no waiting for a shop to get its power back.
Call (850) 726-3186