Our team of preparedness professionals has been monitoring current disasters for the last five years and here is a list of common disasters that occur during the month of October:

• Wildfire disasters
• Hurricane disasters
• Flood disasters
• Climate Change disasters

So, what are we talking about when we mention these general disaster categories?  Let us get more specific about these categories:

Wildfire disasters include situations such as:

• The 2026 Oregon wildfire season burned 2.1 million acres, cost $1.4 billion!
• A deadly Yosemite blaze was sparked by a campfire no one was watching.
• A year after LA wildfires, rebuilding is still going slowly.
• Wildfires in Washington state have spread to 7,700 plus acres and 600 structures were damaged or destroyed.

Hurricane disasters include situations such as:

• Hurricane Polo (happening right now) is expected to impact the U.S. after slamming into Mexico.
• In 2015 Hurricane Patricia’s maximum sustained winds reached an incredible 215 mph.
• Many hurricane victims are older adults who drowned.
• Alaska mops up after typhoon as a strong storm batters the East Coast at the same time.

Flood disasters include situations such as:

• Major floods displace nearly 250,000 people in Asia.
• Flash floods in Texas kill dozens.
• At least 95 people in Spain killed in devastating floods.
• 14,000 people flee monsoon rains.

Extreme weather disasters include situations such as:

• In October of last year, the East Coast and Alaska faced dangerous storms.
• In October of 2024, the U.S. saw extreme heat and windchill advisories in the same month of October.
• Nor'easter brings weekend of strong storms to U.S. Northeast.
• Delays in major disaster aid continue to lengthen.

The month of October brings a change of seasons from summer to autumn and with it wide fluctuations in the weather.  As the real-world headline examples above show, the month of October can bring extreme heat and weather and frigid temperatures, all in the same month.  If you and your family are concerned about these common October disasters, it is time your family acts now because none of these disaster types are going away.  Disasters such as wildfires, floods and hurricanes require a family to have some sort of evacuation plan as an option to ‘riding’ out one of those disasters in your home.  Battling extreme heat or extreme cold requires having a robust shelter in place plan to ensure your family has comfort items in place to ride out these extreme weather situations. 

Since September is National Preparedness Month and if you have not started your preparedness plans yet, October is the perfect time to ‘catch up.’  Check out our September blog post here on how to prepare for most disasters.  If you want to be more informed before you choose to prepare, your family should consider reviewing some of our tiny courses on our family-preparedness website here.   In addition, our website has a number of quizzes you can take to determine if you are ready for more than 50 disaster types that can harm your family.  If the quiz you take indicates your family is not as prepared as they should be then check out the free information on our webpages located here.  Our ‘How to Prepare’ webpages include basic information on how to create a shelter-in-place plan, an evacuation plan, as well as dozens of blog posts on how to prepare your family for the worst that might happen.  Do not put this off.  October is often a beautiful month of fall colors and changing seasons, but it is also ripe for all kinds of disasters that affect the unprepared.  Do not be one of the unprepared families.  Be proactive and prepare your family for safety!