The Hurricane-Season Pet Prep Calendar: Dated Rows, Built on Your Basin's Published Season

Pick your basin first, because hurricane season dates are not national. Then finish your pre-season pet prep by the day your basin’s routine forecast outlooks begin: May 15 for the Atlantic and eastern Pacific, June 1 for the Central Pacific. Each date below comes from an agency or county page, and the rows that only you can fill in are collected at the end.

This page assigns dates and nothing else. For what to buy and when shelves empty, see when to buy pet emergency supplies for hurricane season. For watch and warning stages and supply math per animal, see hurricane pet preparedness.

Step one: name your basin

As of September 29, 2026, these were the season dates NOAA published.

Basin	Official season	Routine Tropical Weather Outlooks	Peak	Source
Atlantic (Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of America)	June 1 to November 30	15 May to 30 November	September 10; most activity mid-August to mid-October	NHC climatology and product descriptions
Eastern Pacific (Mexico and Central America west to 140°W)	May 15 to November 30	15 May to 30 November	Late August, less pronounced than the Atlantic’s; most cyclones late June to early October	NHC climatology and product descriptions
Central Pacific	June 1 to November 30	1 June to 30 November	No peak published	NWS hurricane safety and NHC product descriptions
Guam, Northern Marianas, Micronesia	No season dates published; typhoons occur all year	Not covered on the NHC product page	NWS puts the main season in July through November, peaking mid-August to mid-September	NWS hurricane safety

NHC says of the Atlantic that the season runs June 1 to November 30 “but tropical cyclone activity sometimes occurs before and after these dates, respectively”. For the eastern Pacific it says storms “occasionally occur” before and after May 15 to November 30.

The Central Pacific dates come from the National Weather Service, which says that basin’s season runs June 1 to November 30. The same NWS page says Guam, the Northern Marianas and Micronesia “experience typhoons all year round”. A household in Dededo and a household in Fort Myers cannot use the same sheet of paper. One has a season to aim at. The other has a year.

Step two: use the routine-outlook date as your deadline

The natural instinct is to make the season start the deadline. NHC publishes a better date. Its product descriptions say the Tropical Weather Outlook is issued every six hours from 15 May to 30 November for the Atlantic and Eastern North Pacific basins, and from 1 June to 30 November for the Central North Pacific.

Basin	Routine outlooks begin	Season begins	Gap
Atlantic	May 15	June 1	17 days
Eastern Pacific	May 15	May 15	Same day
Central Pacific	June 1	June 1	Same day

An Atlantic household gets a 17-day grace period built into the federal product schedule. From May 15, a routinely issued product describes anything the Atlantic is brewing, before the season formally opens. That is the last honest moment to be finishing pre-season work rather than starting it.

This calendar uses the routine-outlook start date as the pre-season deadline in every basin. That is our choice, anchored to a published date, and not an agency rule. NOAA, Ready.gov, the ASPCA and the county pages listed under Sources publish no pet-specific pre-season deadline. NOAA publishes dates, Ready.gov publishes a task list, and the calendars below join the two.

Eastern and Central Pacific households have no grace period. Everything must be finished the day the season opens, so the work has to start earlier in the spring.

Step three: pick one dated calendar

Calendar A: Atlantic basin

For households on the US East Coast, the Gulf Coast, the Caribbean, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

Date	Row	Why this date
Late winter and early spring	Start carrier conditioning and start building the prescription buffer within your pharmacy’s refill rules.	Neither row has a fixed finish date, so they start first.
May 1	Palm Beach County, Florida: the pet-friendly shelter pre-registration form opens. Anywhere else: confirm this season’s rule with your own county.	Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control says the form opens every May 1st, a month before hurricane season starts.
Early May, dates change each year	NOAA’s hurricane preparedness campaign week. NOAA’s page carried 2026 campaign materials dated May 3 to May 9.	A free annual prompt. The page was last updated June 11, 2026, so check it for the current year’s dates.
May 15	Pre-season deadline. Every row in the pre-season list below is finished today.	Routine Atlantic Tropical Weather Outlooks begin, 17 days before the season opens.
Around May 21, varies by year	NOAA’s Atlantic seasonal outlook is issued. The 2026 outlook was issued May 21, 2026.	NOAA’s May 21, 2026 news release says the outlook covers overall seasonal activity and is not a landfall forecast. It is not a reason to change the calendar.
June 1	Atlantic season opens.	NHC.
June 20	Average date by which the first Atlantic named storm has formed.	NHC’s table of the average Atlantic season, 1991-2020. NHC cautions that individual seasons can vary considerably from these averages.
July 15	First rotation check: swap food and water on the ASPCA’s two-month interval, counted from May 15.	ASPCA disaster preparedness.
Early August, varies by year	NOAA updates the Atlantic outlook. The 2026 update was issued 6 August 2026.	Informational. It moves no other date.
August 11	Average date by which the first Atlantic hurricane has formed.	NHC average-season table.
Mid-August	The most active stretch of the Atlantic season begins.	NHC.
September 1	Average date by which the first Atlantic major hurricane has formed.	NHC average-season table.
September 10	Statistical peak of the Atlantic season.	NHC.
September 15	Second rotation check. It lands inside the peak window on purpose.	Two months after July 15.
Mid-October	The most active stretch ends.	NHC.
November 15	Third rotation check.	Two months after September 15.
November 30	Season closes and routine outlooks stop. Run the close-out steps below.	NHC.

Calendar B: Eastern Pacific basin

For households in the basin NHC defines as extending from Mexico and Central America west to 140°W, and for households on the California coast, whose tropical storm and hurricane watches and warnings NHC issues from this basin.

The basin definition reads as if it excludes California, and it does not. NHC’s watch and warning breakpoints page says the National Weather Service designates locations along the US East, Gulf and California coasts, Puerto Rico and Hawaii. NHC’s Official Defining Points list, updated 4/6/2026, carries California breakpoints under two forecast offices: San Diego, from the US/Mexico border north to the Orange/Los Angeles County line, and Los Angeles/Oxnard, from that line north to Point Piedras Blancas, plus Catalina Island.

Those points have been used. NHC’s Advisory Number 19 for Tropical Storm Hilary (EP092023), issued 800 PM PDT Sun Aug 20 2023, carried a Tropical Storm Warning for the California/Mexico border to Point Mugu and for Catalina Island. So a San Diego or Los Angeles household is on this calendar, with a May 15 deadline, not on Calendar A’s June 1.

North of Point Piedras Blancas the 2026 breakpoint list carries no US Pacific coast entries. An Oregon or Washington coastal household should ask its local National Weather Service forecast office which hazard calendar applies. The Hilary advisory itself tells readers to monitor products from their local NWS forecast office for area-specific and inland information.

Date	Row	Why this date
Late winter and early spring	Start carrier conditioning and the prescription buffer, earlier than an Atlantic reader would.	There is no grace period in this basin. The deadline and the season start are the same day.
Early May, dates change each year	NOAA’s hurricane preparedness campaign week, dated May 3 to May 9 in the 2026 materials.	Same national campaign, same caveat about checking the current year.
May 15	Pre-season deadline and season opening, on the same day.	NHC: the eastern Pacific season is May 15 to November 30, and routine outlooks begin 15 May.
June 10	Average date by which the first eastern Pacific named storm has formed.	NHC’s table of the average eastern Pacific season, 1991-2020.
Late June	The stretch in which most eastern Pacific cyclones occur begins.	NHC.
June 26	Average date by which the first eastern Pacific hurricane has formed.	NHC average-season table. Compare with the Atlantic’s August 11 before assuming one coast’s calendar travels.
July 15	First rotation check, two months from May 15. Also the average date for the first eastern Pacific major hurricane.	ASPCA interval; NHC average-season table.
Late August	Peak in activity, which NHC calls less pronounced than the Atlantic’s.	NHC.
September 15	Second rotation check.	Two months after July 15.
Early October	The main activity stretch ends.	NHC.
November 15	Third rotation check.	Two months after September 15.
November 30	Season closes and routine outlooks stop. Run the close-out steps.	NHC.

Calendar C: Central Pacific basin

For households in Hawaii and the surrounding Central North Pacific.

Date	Row	Why this date
Late winter and early spring	Carrier conditioning and prescription buffer.	Neither finishes on a deadline day.
Early May, dates change each year	NOAA’s hurricane preparedness campaign week.	The campaign is national even though the season dates are not.
June 1	Pre-season deadline and season opening, on the same day.	NWS: the Central Pacific season runs June 1 to November 30. NHC: routine Central North Pacific outlooks run 1 June to 30 November.
August 1	First rotation check, two months from June 1.	ASPCA interval.
October 1	Second rotation check.	Two months after August 1.
November 30	Season closes and routine outlooks stop. Run the close-out steps.	NWS and NHC.

Two rows from the Florida calendars are missing here. NHC’s climatology page carries average-season tables for the Atlantic and eastern Pacific but not for the Central Pacific, so there are no average-first-hurricane rows.

The other missing row is rabies. The Hawaii Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity says Hawai’i is rabies-free and that its quarantine law exists to keep it that way. That is a statement about the state’s rabies status, not about what a shelter asks for at the door. So a Hawaii calendar gets a dated reminder to confirm your own county’s shelter requirements, not a mainland county’s rabies-tag rule.

Calendar D: Guam, the Northern Marianas and Micronesia

This one breaks the format, and that is the point. There is no season start to aim a deadline at, so the pre-season block cannot exist as a block. Use these rules instead.

• Run the rotation clock year-round. The ASPCA’s two-month interval does not pause in February. Pick two dates you will not forget and run them six times a year.
• Make documents, registry and carrier rows annual maintenance. Set them on a birthday, a vaccination anniversary or any fixed date you already keep.
• Tighten up before July through November, the main season NWS gives for these islands, not during it.
• Ask about paperwork locally. The two counties quoted below are Florida counties. Ask your own emergency management office what its shelters require and whether anything must be filed in advance.

If your hazard is not a tropical cyclone, none of these calendars is yours. Start at the pet emergency playbooks hub and pick the hazard you face.

Being on the Pacific coast is not a reason to skip this page. Calendar B is the California coast’s calendar, with a May 15 deadline. That matches the date when to buy pet emergency supplies for hurricane season gives Pacific-coast readers for the buying half of the job.

The pre-season list

These rows must be finished by your basin’s deadline: May 15 for the Atlantic and eastern Pacific, June 1 for the Central Pacific, or, for Guam, the Northern Marianas and Micronesia, a fixed annual date you pick yourself.

• Confirm this season’s shelter rule with your own county, including whether a form exists and the day it opens.
• Write down each animal’s expiry dates: rabies certificate, county license and anything else the county names.
• Set a reorder date for each prescription, back-calculated from your fill length and your pharmacy’s early-refill rules.
• Records, registry and photo: microchip contact audit, documents in a waterproof container and available electronically, and a current picture of you with your pet.
• Vehicle fit check: the carriers you own, in the vehicle you will drive, with the people who will be in it.
• Large-animal rows, if you keep any: trailer readiness, identification, paperwork and a confirmed destination.
• Any registry that expires, such as the Texas one described below, re-filed for this year.

Two more rows belong here but cannot be finished on deadline day, which is why the calendars start them in late winter: carrier conditioning and building the prescription buffer. Kit rotation is not on this list. It is a during-season row on a two-month clock.

Shelter access is a county paperwork deadline

This is the row most likely to be wrong on a calendar copied off the internet, because the answer is set county by county.

Palm Beach County, Florida says its Online Pre-Registration Form “opens every May 1st, providing a month’s advance notice before the start of Hurricane Season.” The same page says “pre-registration does not guarantee your pet a spot at the Pet Friendly Shelter” and that the shelter is a last-resort option. It does not accept equines, livestock, small barnyard animals, exotic pets or reptiles. As of September 29, 2026, the page still carried a leftover notice from a 2024 activation saying pre-registration was no longer available, so call the county rather than relying on the page alone.

Miami-Dade County, Florida answers the other way. Its pet preparedness page says “Pre-registration is not required to use the evacuation center”. Evacuation centers are announced as needed, and on arrival a licensed veterinarian examines pets to decide whether any presents a safety risk. A pet judged a risk is not allowed in.

Two more Miami-Dade rules belong on a multi-animal household’s calendar. The requirements list says “Limit four pets per household” and “At least one family member must remain in the evacuation center with the pet.” The FAQ on the same page says centers accept up to four pets per person. Four per household and four per person are different numbers for a family of three, and a spring phone call settles the question in a way a storm week does not. If you keep five animals in Miami-Dade County, the pre-season row is to find out now where the fifth one goes.

Do not average the two counties. The dated row on your calendar is not a reminder to pre-register. It is confirm what my county requires this season, and if there is a form, note the day it opens. Do it before your basin’s season starts, because county pages change between seasons.

Also check what your county says it will look at the door. Miami-Dade says annual rabies vaccinations and a visible Miami-Dade County dog license are required for dogs, and cats also need annual rabies vaccinations. Palm Beach County lists an ID tag, microchip information and a county license and rabies tag on the collar among items to bring, plus a waterproof bag with vet records, behavior notes and proof of ownership. It does not publish a vaccination interval on that page. Either way, the day the rabies certificate expires and the day the county license expires are calendar entries, not vague intentions. Our page on what a pet shelter checks at intake covers the door in detail.

Prescription buffer

Every other row is a fixed date. This one is arithmetic, and it differs for each drug in your house.

The ASPCA’s disaster preparedness page calls for a two-week supply of any medicine your pet requires, kept in a waterproof container, and says food and medications need to be rotated out of the kit or they go bad or become useless. Palm Beach County’s suggested list for its own shelter asks for a smaller figure, at least 5 days of medications per pet, which is a floor for a stay at that shelter rather than a household target. When two numbers disagree, plan to the larger one and carry the smaller as the minimum you must be able to show.

No published source gives the date you personally must reorder, because it depends on your fill length, your pharmacy’s early-refill rules and shipping. Our pet medication refill calculator takes the last refill date, the days a fill lasts and the buffer you want, and returns the reorder date. Run it once per prescription in early spring and write each date on the calendar as its own row.

This row starts in late winter because a buffer may not be available in one transaction if your pharmacy limits early refills. Ask your pharmacy what its early-refill rules are, and ask your veterinarian about anything specific to your animal’s medication.

Kit rotation: this page sets the dates

The interval is the ASPCA’s. Its disaster preparedness page says to keep 7-10 days’ worth of canned or dry food and rotate it every two months, and to store at least seven days’ worth of bottled water for each person and pet and replace it every two months.

Counted from each basin’s deadline, that gives July 15, September 15 and November 15 for an Atlantic or eastern Pacific household, and August 1 and October 1 for a Central Pacific household. In the Atlantic, the September 15 check lands inside the mid-August to mid-October window NHC names as the most active, five days after the September 10 peak. If you keep only one of the three checks, keep that one.

What goes into each check and how to keep a best-by date attached to decanted food is on the pet emergency kit rotation checklist. That page says what to do. This calendar says which days to do it.

Records, registry and the photo

Ready.gov’s Prepare Your Pets for Disasters page (last updated 03/20/2026) puts three items in this row:

• Microchip contact details. Have your pet microchipped, keep your address and phone number up to date, and include an emergency contact outside your immediate area.
• Documents. Keep copies of your pet’s registration information and other relevant documents in a waterproof container and available electronically.
• A photo. Keep a picture of you and your pet together, which helps document ownership and lets others help identify the animal if you are separated.

All three are pre-season rows because a stale one fails silently at the moment you rely on it. A microchip registered to a phone number you gave up two years ago scans perfectly and returns nothing. Our microchip registration audit and contact chain walks through the audit, and waterproof pet document kits covers the container. Put one dated row on the calendar for the audit and one for the photo, both before the deadline, and redo the photo yearly for a growing animal.

Carrier conditioning has no completion date, so it goes first

Ready.gov describes the method rather than a duration. Leave the carrier out in places your pet frequently visits, leave it open, feed treats near it and inside it, and add a favorite blanket or small bed so it smells familiar. It also says to make note of where your pets hide, so you can find them quickly if you have to leave your house in a hurry.

Ready.gov puts no number of days on that routine. That is the nature of habituation, and it is why this row sits at the front of the calendar. A row with a fixed cost can be scheduled against a deadline. A row with an open-ended cost has to start early and be reviewed. Our guide to getting a hiding, scared or aggressive cat into a carrier covers what to do when conditioning has not taken and the storm arrives anyway.

Vehicle fit check

One dated row before the deadline: put the carriers you own into the vehicle you plan to drive, with the people who will be in it, and find out whether it works. Doing that in April costs an hour. Doing it at the warning stage can cost the departure.

The substance is on car loading and carriers for multiple pets, which covers restraint, crash-test certification, anchoring, cargo-area heat and loading order. Read it once in the spring and let this calendar remind you to rehearse.

Large animals run on a different clock

If you keep horses, cattle, goats or poultry, the pre-season rows still apply: trailer and vehicle readiness, permanent and temporary identification, paperwork, and a destination confirmed before you need it. This page does not set a departure hour for large animals. That is hazard-specific, and horse and livestock evacuation basics splits its timing guidance by hazard because fire and hurricane guidance give close to opposite instructions about the same animal.

Because the Palm Beach County shelter does not accept equines, livestock, small barnyard animals, exotic pets or reptiles, a large-animal or exotics household there needs a destination secured pre-season. Households with birds should also read bird and parrot emergency preparedness, and flock keepers backyard chicken emergency evacuation, before the deadline.

Registries with their own expiry dates

Some jurisdictions run a registry that expires on its own schedule, which makes it a recurring calendar row. Texas is the example on this page.

The Texas Division of Emergency Management describes its State of Texas Emergency Assistance Registry (STEAR) as a free registry that gives local emergency planners and responders more information about community needs. The page lists who should register: people with disabilities, people who are medically fragile, and people with access and functional needs such as limited mobility, communication barriers, or needs for medical, transportation or personal care assistance. The required fields are name, address, phone number and primary language. Pets appear in a separate list of additional questions, so the pet field exists but is not one of the four required fields.

Three points on the page belong on a calendar. Registration is voluntary and does not guarantee a specific service during an emergency, and available services vary by community. And it expires: “Your information will be kept in the system for 1 year. You should re-register after that time period.”

If you are in Texas and qualify, that is a dated yearly row. If you are elsewhere, take the question rather than the program: ask your state or county emergency management office whether it runs a registry, whether pets are a field on it, and whether it expires.

After November 30

The season-end date is a bookkeeping date, not an all-clear. Next spring’s version of you should not treat December as empty.

• Run the last rotation. The November 15 check is the last one inside the Atlantic and eastern Pacific seasons.
• Write down what failed. The carrier that did not fit, the document you could not find, the prescription that was three days short, the neighbor who was not home. This is the only time of year you will remember these accurately, and it is the input to next spring’s list.
• Confirm your destination for next season. A relative’s house, a boarding facility or a pet-friendly hotel you called: check whether the arrangement stands while the person you spoke to remembers the conversation. Our guide to boarding your pet or evacuating together in a hurricane covers that decision.
• If you were displaced, know the hold clocks. Palm Beach County, Florida says animals found while the community is impacted by a hurricane are kept for 10 days before becoming available for pre-adoption, that no adoption is finalized until 30 days after the animal was brought in, and that local shelters and rescues may not transport storm-displaced animals out of county for 30 days. Those are Palm Beach County’s figures. Your county’s hold period may be shorter, so if an animal is missing, ask on day one.

The off-season row

Every calendar built around a season has a hole in it. NHC says Atlantic activity sometimes occurs before and after the official dates, and eastern Pacific storms occasionally do too. Its product descriptions say a Special Tropical Weather Outlook can be used for disturbances outside the normal season, when Tropical Weather Outlooks are not routinely issued.

For a pet household the risk is not that off-season storms are more dangerous. Outside the season there is no routine six-hourly product arriving on a schedule, so you are less likely to be watching. A household that stopped checking in February relies entirely on being told.

So the off-season row reads: keep the alerting on year-round, and keep the two-month rotation running through the winter. Ready.gov names the mechanisms: wireless emergency alerts from state and local public safety officials, and National Weather Service alerts on your phone for multiple locations. For readers in Guam, the Northern Marianas and Micronesia this is not an edge case. It is the whole year.

Build your own copy

The four calendars are the published skeleton. These five rows are the ones only you can fill in. Write them on the same sheet.

Row	What you write	Where the answer comes from
My basin and its dates	Season start, season end, routine-outlook start	The table at the top of this page
My county’s shelter rule	Is there a form, when does it open, what do they check at the door	Your county emergency management or animal services office, confirmed this season
My animals’ expiry dates	Rabies certificate expiry, county license expiry, any registry expiry	Your veterinarian’s records and your county
My reorder dates	One per prescription	The pet medication refill calculator, run once per drug
My rotation dates	Two or three fixed days	Counted forward from your basin’s deadline on the ASPCA’s two-month interval

Print it, or put every row into whatever calendar already pings your phone. A calendar that lives in a document you have to remember to open has the same failure mode as the kit in the back of the closet.

What this calendar does not cover

It does not tell you when to leave. Departure timing depends on the storm, your geography and your household, not on the season. See how early to leave with pets for the leave-by arithmetic, the T-minus storm countdown card for pets for the printable execution version, and hurricane pet preparedness for the watch and warning stages.

It does not publish a national set of dates, because NOAA does not publish one either. Every figure above is scoped to the basin, agency page or county it came from. Check yours against the source before the season opens, and again next spring.