Hurricane Season in La Ventana: The Plan I Wish Everyone Had

Every summer someone messages me, usually a first-year snowbird or a new owner, asking some version of the same nervous question: is a hurricane going to flatten the house? And every year I give the same honest answer, which surprises people: on our side of the peninsula, the wind is almost never the thing that hurts us. It’s the water, and it’s being cut off from La Paz.

I put together a proper preparedness guide for the town this year because the good, La-Ventana-specific version of this didn’t live anywhere online. This is the short version of it — the plan I actually run, in the order the steps need to happen. Season here runs May 15 to November 30, the peak is August through October, and this year’s outlook is above-normal, so I’d rather you read this in July than in the middle of a warning.

Prefer the printable one-pager? It opens in a new tab — read it there, or save it for when the power’s out.

Open the printable hurricane guide →

What the town remembers

Baja California Sur has a long memory for storms, and the lesson is always the same. In 1976, Liza was the deadliest — a flash flood burst a dyke near La Paz and hundreds of people were lost. It was rain, not wind. Marty hit La Paz directly in 2003 and tore boats from their anchors. John, in 2006, brought 110-mph gusts and more than 20 inches of rain that closed the roads and the airport. Odile in 2014 was the big one — drinking water cut off across the whole state, ten thousand homes damaged, weeks without power. And Norma, as recently as 2023, dropped up to 19 inches of rain, washed out highways, and closed the La Paz airport and port.

Look at that list and the pattern jumps out. A direct hit of destructive wind is the rare event. The reliable danger — the one that comes with almost every serious storm — is flooding. Arroyos that go from dry to deadly in minutes. The one road to La Paz closing. And then days, sometimes weeks, without power, water, or a way to restock. So I don’t plan for wind. I plan for isolation.

The order of operations

Phase 0 — before the season, while the sky is calm

This is the part almost everyone leaves too late. Cut and label your window panels now (more on that below), because plywood is the first thing to sell out. Build your kit. Photograph every room, the roof, and the vehicles for insurance, and put the photos in the cloud. Walk the road to the highway and learn which low arroyo crossings flood — those are the ones that trap people. Agree a check-in plan with your neighbors: who has a generator, a truck, spare water. And track down the after-storm gear now — a solar power bank, a couple of small solar fans for the heat, and an old-fashioned analog AM/FM radio, not a digital streaming one, so you can catch Protección Civil updates when the internet is down.

Phase 1 — 72 to 48 hours out, when a watch is issued

Make the La Paz run early, on the first morning of a watch, before everyone else empties the shelves. Fill the vehicle, plus jerry cans and propane — stations run dry and outages shut the pumps for days. Take out cash in small bills, because no power means no card readers and no ATMs. And stock for three weeks of being cut off, not three days.

Phase 2 — 36 to 24 hours out, when a warning is issued

Board the windows now, in daylight, before the wind starts. Bring in or tie down anything that can fly — palapa furniture, kite gear, shade sails, gas tanks. Flying debris is what breaks windows. Fill every water container, plus the bathtub and the tinaco, for washing and flushing once the pump has no power. Charge everything and freeze bottles of water. Then decide, calmly, whether you’re staying or going to a shelter.

Phase 3 — during, when the storm is over you

Stay small and stay inside, in an interior room away from every window, even the boarded ones. Never drive or walk through moving water — an arroyo can rise in minutes, and this is how most people die here. Don’t trust the calm of the eye; the wind comes back from the opposite direction, often harder. Keep the analog radio on for the all-clear.

Phase 4 — after, the days that follow

Wait for the official all-clear before you open the house. Treat every downed line as live. Watch every step — the arroyos sweep nails, glass, and sheet metal down through town, so wear closed boots and gloves. Treat all tap water as contaminated until the authorities say otherwise. Eat the food that will spoil first, cooking down the fridge and freezer before you touch the pantry. And find the neighbor with solar — whoever has panels can keep things cold and charge phones through the hottest hours.

Then make it a party. Pool that spoil-first food with the neighbors and cook it together, one big shared meal while the storm is still fresh. It keeps good food from going to waste, gets everyone’s news into one place, and does more for the nerves than anything else in the kit.

Boarding the windows — the part people ask about most

The trick is to do the slow, fiddly work in Phase 0 so that Phase 2 is just lifting panels and driving screws. Use 5/8-inch (15 mm) exterior-grade plywood — buy it in La Paz at the start of the season, not when a storm is named. Cut each panel four inches larger than the opening on every side, so you anchor into solid wall around the glass, not into the frame. Write the room and side on the back with a marker.

Most casas here are block or concrete, so sink plastic expansion anchors — taquetes — around each window every 12 inches, and pre-drill matching holes in the panels. When the warning comes you just line up and drive the screws. Wood-frame houses get 2½-inch screws straight through into the framing.

One thing to skip: the masking-tape “X.” It’s the most common myth on the coast and it does nothing — it just turns a broken window into bigger, more dangerous shards. Solid panels over the opening are the only thing that works.

The La Paz lifeline

Everything we need in a storm — supplies, fuel, cash, hospitals — comes from La Paz, about an hour northwest, down one road that crosses several arroyos. So the timing rule matters more than almost anything else here: go at dawn, and be home by noon. All season, storms build over the sierra most afternoons and send a wall of rain down the arroyos around 1 PM, often while it’s still sunny on the bay. That water raises the crossings fast. If you’re still on the road at one o’clock, you may not get across in either direction.

For the supply run itself: the big stores — Chedraui, Soriana, Walmart, City Club — for water, food, and batteries; Home Depot for plywood, anchors, and tarps. And if someone in your household has a fragile medical condition, the honest move is to go to La Paz before the storm, not during. Our clinic is small; serious cases go to the Hospital General in La Paz. Once the road floods, the ambulance can’t reach us either.

The kit, sized honestly

I size everything to the Odile benchmark — one person cut off for three weeks — then multiply by everyone in the house and round up. That’s about 4 liters of water per person per day (roughly 80 liters, or 20 gallons, for three weeks) for drinking and cooking, plus separate stored water for cleaning and the toilet. Around 20 kg of no-cook, shelf-stable food per person. A full 30-day supply of any medications, because pharmacies may stay shut even after the road reopens. And three weeks of cash in small bills.

Two numbers to keep somewhere everyone can find them: 911 is Mexico’s national emergency line, and 071 reaches CFE for power outages. Fill in the rest — your Protección Civil, water pipa, propane, and nearest shelter — with your own local contacts, and tape the list inside a cupboard.

The bottom line

Hurricane season here isn’t something to be afraid of, but it is something to respect and to prepare for in advance. The houses mostly ride out the wind. What catches people is the flooding and the isolation — the arroyo they tried to cross, the supply run they made a day too late, the three weeks of no power they didn’t stock for. Do the quiet Phase 0 work now, in July, and the rest of the season gets a lot calmer. If you’re renting with me and a storm is ever on the way, you’ll hear from me directly — but I’d rather you already had the plan.

Get the printable guide

I made a longer, single-page version of all this — the full storm history, the window-boarding diagram, the ration amounts, a supply checklist you can tick off, and a contacts card to fill in and stick inside a cupboard. It’s built to print.

Open the printable hurricane guide →

It opens in a new tab, so you can read it right there — then print it or save it to your computer for when the power and internet are down.

— Diana