June 1 arrives every year, and every year the Treasure Coast spends it thinking about plywood, generators, and water jugs. Here's what rarely makes the list: the sliding glass doors that are, square foot for square foot, the largest openings in your home's protective envelope. When the National Hurricane Center starts drawing cones toward Florida, a slider that doesn't close fully, doesn't lock positively, or wobbles in its track becomes a genuine vulnerability — and one you can't fix with a storm 48 hours out.
Here's the preparation checklist we walk through on our own homes, in the order that matters. (For the official all-hazards preparation picture, NOAA's hurricane preparedness guidance is the authoritative starting point — this checklist covers the doors specifically.)
Wind load and wind-driven rain exploit gaps. A door riding on worn rollers sits low and out of square, which opens daylight around the frame and — critically — lets the latch miss its keeper. A door that doesn't positively lock isn't just a security issue in a storm; an unlatched slider can be worked open by gusting pressure differentials, and once wind enters a home, roof damage risk rises dramatically.
The test takes ten seconds: close the door normally, lock it, then try to lift the panel and pull it open. Movement, rattle, or a latch that needs the door "jiggled" to catch means the door needs alignment or roller work — in June, when it's a routine appointment, not in the week a storm is named.
The small slots on the exterior track face are weep holes — the drainage path that lets wind-driven rain escape outward instead of pooling and overtopping into your home. Years of sand and debris block them silently. Vacuum the track, then verify each weep hole is clear (a pipe cleaner works). During a tropical downpour, functioning weeps are the difference between a wet track doing its job and water sheeting over the sill into the living room.
Grip the closed panel's handle side and rack it gently — it should feel solid. Wobble usually means worn rollers or loose head-track guides, and a loose panel in a frame is exactly what you don't want absorbing gust loads for six hours. This is a hardware fix, not a storm-week improvisation.
If you have accordion or panel shutters over the sliders, run them now: coastal shutter hardware corrodes on the same salt clock as door rollers, and a shutter that won't deploy is discovered at the worst possible moment. If you have impact glass, understand what it is — a system designed to fail safely without breaching, not to emerge unscathed; it still wants the door locked and seated correctly to perform as tested. And if you have neither, your slider is ordinary glass facing whatever the season brings — worth an honest conversation about protection options before you need them. The Federal Alliance for Safe Homes (FLASH) publishes excellent homeowner guidance on opening protection.
Storm season is also looting season, uncomfortable as that is. Evacuated neighborhoods get tested, and the sliding door's factory latch remains the easiest entry in most homes. A deadbolt-style slider lock anchors the panel to the frame against both prying hands and pressure — one hardware upgrade serving security and storm-worthiness at once.
Whether the storm hit or brushed past, its winds carried enormous quantities of salt spray and fine sand far inland — and packed them into every door track on the coast. What we see every post-storm season: doors that survived the wind fine, then degrade rapidly over the following months as storm-deposited salt eats the bearings.
The fix costs nothing: once conditions clear, rinse tracks with fresh water, wipe them dry, and run the door a few times. If the door came through with new grinding, shuddering, or drag it didn't have before, that's storm grit in the hardware — worth a service visit before it grinds anything permanent.
Every item above is either free or a routine repair in the calm months. The same items in an active-storm week range from stressful to impossible — parts get scarce, schedules jam, and a door problem you knew about in June becomes the thing you're bracing with a broomstick in October. If your sliders failed any test on this list, get them looked at now, while "now" is easy.
Most storm damage to a slider is not the glass. It is water on the floor, and it arrives by a route that surprises people.
A sliding door sill is not a dam. It is a drainage system. Rain that hits the glass runs down into the outer track, and the track is designed to carry it sideways to small slots on the exterior face called weep holes, which let it drain back outside. In ordinary rain, that works quietly and you never think about it.
A hurricane changes two variables at once. The volume of water arriving is far higher than the track was sized for, and the wind is pushing on it. Wind-driven rain does not fall into the track, it is fired at it horizontally, and sustained pressure on the outside face means water is being pushed inward at the same time gravity is trying to send it out through the weeps.
Now block the weeps with years of sand, lawn clippings and salt crust — which is the normal condition of a Florida track nobody has vacuumed — and the outer channel fills. Once the water level in that channel reaches the inner track, it stops being drainage and becomes a reservoir sitting against your floor. It overtops the sill and runs inside, and the homeowner concludes the door leaked. The door did not leak. Its drainage was full.
That is why weep-hole clearance is a genuine storm-prep item and not a housekeeping detail. Our track cleaning routine covers the whole sequence, weeps included.
You do not need instruments for this. Do it on a bright day with the door closed and locked, and work around the perimeter.
Seals and sweeps are the cheapest components on a slider and among the most commonly ignored. They are also worth replacing in a calm week rather than a named one, since a brittle seal is not a part anyone keeps on the shelf during a rush.
By this point the repairs are behind you. What is left is a short sequence, and it is worth writing down before the day arrives.
Then leave the doors alone. Opening an interior slider mid-storm to check on the lanai is how pressure gets into a house, and pressure inside a house is what lifts roofs.
This is documentation, not claims advice, and we are not the people to tell you what any policy covers. What we can tell you is what people wish they had photographed, because we hear about it every season.
Before the storm, take a short set of pictures of each slider in daylight: the full door from inside, the full door from outside, the track, and any shutter or panel in its deployed position. Timestamped images of an intact, functioning door are the baseline that everything afterwards gets compared against, and they take four minutes.
After the storm, photograph before you clean, before you dry and before you move anything. Water lines on the floor and the sill. Debris where it landed. The track with whatever is in it still in it. Any cracked, chipped or displaced glass, from far enough back to show which opening it is and close enough to show the damage. Standing water outside the door as well as inside, because where the water was outside often explains how it got in.
Then wait for your own photographs to be safely off the phone before you start the cleanup. Once a track is vacuumed and a floor is dried, the evidence of what happened is gone, and a repair visit two weeks later can only tell you what the door is like now.
Take the pictures, then get the salt out. The next section covers that.
Storm prep on a balcony door runs into association rules faster than anything else on this list, and the time to find out is June rather than the day a cone appears.
Three questions decide most of it. Who is responsible for the door, which in Florida buildings usually splits the glass and outer frame from the operating hardware. What may be attached to it, which is normally governed by uniform-appearance and frame-penetration rules. And who deploys the building's protection, which in many towers is a staff task on a schedule rather than something an owner does from inside the unit.
Practical consequences worth knowing now:
Ask the manager by email in the calm season and keep the reply. Our guide to who pays for a condo slider sets out the vocabulary and the order in which to ask.
Seasonal owners leave in May and the storms arrive in August, which means the doors have to be storm-ready with nobody there to react.
Before you fly out: clear every track and prove every weep hole drains, because that is the failure that floods an empty house for hours before anyone notices. Close and lock every panel, engage secondary locks, and confirm each door latches without being lifted. Run the shutters through a full cycle so you learn now, not in October, that coastal shutter hardware has corroded on the same salt clock as everything else. Move lanai and balcony furniture inside. Photograph each door.
Then deal with the seize-up, which is the specifically Florida problem. A door left locked and unmoved through five humid months corrodes faster than one used daily, because motion is what wipes the brine film off the bearing surfaces. Nothing moves, so the film sits and works all summer. That is why so many returning owners find a door that will not slide in November, having left a door that slid fine in May.
The circuit that prevents it: ask whoever checks the property to cycle each slider fully both ways, once a month, then lock it again. It takes a minute per door and it is the single highest-value thing a house-checker can do.
Booking the service check before you return beats booking it after you land. Same-day service is available, but October is a calmer week than the one you arrive in. See maintenance service.
It stops the panel sliding, which has value — but it does nothing about lift-out, gaps from misalignment, or gust rattle, and it isn't a substitute for a door that closes square and locks positively. Treat it as a supplement, never the plan.
No. Impact systems are tested as installed — panel seated, locked, and square. A misaligned, half-latched impact door isn't performing to its rating. The glass is only half the system; the hardware holding it in place is the other half.
The ten-second test: close, lock, then try to lift and pull the door open. If it moves, rattles, or the latch needs coaxing, the door isn't storm-ready — and the underlying fix is usually routine roller or alignment work.
April or May, and the reason is scheduling rather than sales pressure. Everything on this checklist is either free or a routine repair in a calm month. The same items in the week a storm is named compete with every other homeowner on the Treasure Coast for the same appointments and the same parts. A roller set is an ordinary order in April and a scarce item in the week after a cone appears. If your door failed the lift-and-lock test, that is a scheduled visit now rather than an urgent one later, and 96% of our jobs finish in a single visit.
Almost certainly the drainage, not the door. Rain running down the glass collects in the outer track, which is meant to carry it to weep holes on the exterior face and drain it back outside. Sand, salt crust and lawn debris block those weeps silently over years. In a storm the arriving water outruns whatever drainage is left, the outer channel fills, the level reaches the inner track, and it overtops the sill onto your floor. Clearing the track and proving each weep hole drains fixes the actual cause; sealing around the door usually makes it worse by trapping water in.
You can, and the door underneath is still the weak point. Shutters and impact glazing are both tested as complete systems, which assumes a panel that is seated square in its frame and positively locked. A door that has sagged onto worn rollers is not seated, its latch is barely engaging, and it has daylight gaps around the interlock that wind-driven rain will find whether or not there is a shutter outside. Get the panel back to square first. It is routine roller and alignment work, and it makes the protection you already paid for perform the way it was rated.
Yes, and this is the step almost everyone skips. A storm that brushes past still drives enormous quantities of salt aerosol and fine sand inland and packs both into every door track on the coast. The doors survive the wind fine, then degrade over the following months as that salt pulls moisture out of humid air and holds a brine film against the bearing surfaces. Once conditions clear, rinse the tracks with fresh water, wipe them dry and run each door several times. New grinding or drag that was not there before is storm grit in the hardware.
It depends on your declaration, and storm damage often follows different rules from ordinary maintenance. The common pattern treats the glass and outer frame as building envelope and the operating hardware as the owner's, but hurricane damage frequently sits under separate insurance provisions that override the everyday split. Report it to management in writing with photographs before you commission anything, because a repair carried out first can erase the evidence of what happened. Our guide to condo slider responsibility covers the vocabulary and the order in which to ask.
Clear every track and prove the weep holes drain, since an undetected overtop in an empty house runs for hours. Lock every panel and confirm each one latches without being lifted. Cycle the shutters once so you find corroded hardware in May rather than in October. Move balcony and lanai furniture inside. Then arrange for whoever checks the property to slide each door fully open and closed once a month: an unmoved door corrodes faster than a used one, because motion is what wipes the salt film off the bearings, and that single minute per door prevents the November seize-up.
Yes, every one of them, including any behind shutters. A locked panel is pulled into its frame and takes wind load as a seated system; an unlocked one is a loose sheet of glass held only by its own weight, and sustained pressure differentials can work it open. Leave them locked for the duration, and resist the urge to open an interior slider to check the lanai mid-storm. Once wind gets inside a house it has to go somewhere, and internal pressure is what turns a wind event into a roof event.
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