The Florida hurricane prep canopy checklist.

Florida's hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30, and the canopy work that actually protects a property happens before May ends. By the time a named storm is on the cone, it is too late — every reputable crew in the state is fully booked, supply chains tighten, and the risk window for aerial work closes. The cuts that matter most are structural, slow, and made in calm weather.

What follows is the same walkthrough our crews use when we audit a property in February through April. It is written for owners and property managers who want to understand the work, not just commission it.

Step one: walk the property in daylight

Start with a slow, deliberate walk around every tree on the lot. Look up — most of the failure points sit above eye level and never get noticed from a driveway. Bring a notebook. You are cataloging risk, not making decisions yet.

The five things to flag on that first pass:

• Deadwood — branches with no leaves in growing season, brittle bark, or visible fungal conks.
• Hanging limbs — anything snapped or detached but caught in the canopy.
• Large stub cuts from previous storm damage — these are decay entry points.
• Co-dominant leaders with included bark — two trunks of similar size meeting in a tight V, with bark pinched between them. This is the single most common failure mode in mature live oaks.
• New lean — any tree that leans noticeably more than it did twelve months ago, especially with soil heaving on the opposite side of the lean.

Step two: understand which cuts actually help

Hurricane prep is not topping. Topping a tree before a storm is one of the worst things you can do to it — you remove the wind-bearing structure the tree spent decades building, and you leave a stub that will fail at the wound within three to five years. We see the aftermath every season.

What helps, in order of structural value:

1. Selective interior thinning — removing crossing, redundant, and inward-growing branches to reduce sail area without changing the silhouette.
2. End-weight reduction on long horizontal limbs — shortening the outermost portion of overextended limbs to reduce lever arm.
3. Deadwood removal — anything brittle or detached, full stop.
4. Structural pruning on young trees — correcting co-dominant leaders before they become a problem at 40 feet.

Step three: what to leave alone

• Healthy mature live oaks with full, balanced canopies. They are evolutionarily built for hurricanes; the worst thing you can do is open them up unnecessarily.
• Palms. Sabal and royal palms are engineered for wind. Over-trimming a palm (the 'hurricane cut') weakens it and is illegal in many municipalities.
• Anything you are tempted to top. Call instead.

Step four: the pre-season call list

Schedule an ISA-certified arborist between February and May. A full property audit takes 60–90 minutes and produces a written prescription with priorities. The actual cutting work, for a typical half-acre residential lot, fits in a single day visit.

If you only do one thing this year, do that audit. It is the cheapest insurance available on a mature canopy.

What we bring to a pre-season audit

• Resistograph readings on any trunk showing decay indicators
• Soil compaction probing at the dripline
• Photo documentation of every flagged limb with GPS-tagged map
• Written prescription with priority tiers and rough costs
• Clear written record of what was deliberately left alone, and why

That documentation matters for two reasons. First, insurance carriers increasingly ask for it after a claim. Second, it gives the next arborist who works on your property — possibly years from now — the context to make good decisions.