By the time a storm has a name, it's too late to fix a gutter system — the work happens in the calm months or it doesn't happen. Here's the pre-season pass we'd run on any Northeast Florida house.
Start in the gutters: clear them, then flush every downspout with a hose until water runs freely out the bottom. A downspout that gurgles or backs up is blocked somewhere you can't see, and a blocked downspout in a tropical rain band turns the whole gutter into a waterfall against your fascia.
Check the hardware: grab a gutter run and give it an honest tug. Movement means hangers are loose or spikes have worked out — a wind-driven storm will finish what gravity started. Look for pooling in the runs after the flush; standing water marks a pitch problem that heavy rain will exploit.
Walk the discharge: find where every downspout's water ends up. Splash blocks aimed at the foundation, pop-up emitters glued shut with grass clippings, underground runs that haven't been flow-tested in years — each is a failure waiting for exactly the wrong week. Run water through buried lines and confirm it comes out where it should.
Then look at the yard's escape routes: swales clear, drain grates unblocked, nothing stored where water needs to travel. If any step of that list turns up a problem — or you'd rather have the whole path checked by people who do it daily — a free estimate before the season is the cheapest storm prep there is.
