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Guide

Tsunami: what to do on the Gulf

Checked October 4, 2026 against the TAMUG Tsunami Research Group’s maps, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, the Florida Division of Emergency Management and the county alert pages linked below; the rest September 30, 2026, against the National Tsunami Warning Center, the National Weather Service, the National Hurricane Center and the U.S. Geological Survey.

The Tsunami tile repeats what the National Tsunami Warning Center has said. A tsunami on Florida’s Gulf coast is rare, and this page says plainly what is and is not known about one, what each alert level means, how to get your county’s alerts, and why the water that usually does the harm here comes from a hurricane instead.

If the Gulf does something strange, go to high ground or inland now. The National Weather Service’s natural warnings: a strong or long earthquake; the sea rising like “a fast-rising flood or a wall of water”, or draining away to show the bottom; or a loud roar from the water. Any of those means a tsunami “could arrive within minutes.” Do not wait for an official warning, a phone alert or this website.

Who warns this coast

The National Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska, issues tsunami messages for this coast. NOAA gives its area as “coastlines along the continental United States, Alaska, and Canada”, and that includes the Gulf. Its first messages are built from the earthquake’s location, depth and magnitude, often before any wave has been measured, and they are updated, upgraded or cancelled as more information comes in.

What is actually known about the Gulf

The U.S. Geological Survey’s summary is short: tsunamis on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts “are rare, but the risks associated with these natural hazards are high.” The source studied most is not an earthquake fault but an underwater landslide on the steep continental slope far offshore. The TAMUG Tsunami Research Group, which maps the Gulf’s hazard for NOAA’s National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program, writes that the probability of a massive one is “quite low”. Escambia County’s own page puts it the same way: a tsunami striking Florida’s coasts “is considered to be remote”.

The record agrees, with one twist. NOAA’s historical tsunami database, searched for Florida, lists four readings on the coast these boards cover. Three are meteotsunamis, waves pushed up by a fast-moving line of storms, not by an earthquake: at Panama City Beach on April 23, 2020, about half a metre; at Clearwater Beach on June 13, 2020, about half a metre; and at Clearwater Beach again on June 21, 2023, with no height recorded. On January 15, 2022, the Pensacola gauge caught a two-centimetre ripple from the eruption of Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai, on the other side of the world. Nothing in that record is a warning to wait for, which is why the sea’s own signs above come first.

The maps

The Tsunami Research Group has drawn tsunami inundation maps for six places on the Panhandle: Pensacola, East Gulf Breeze, Navarre, Okaloosa Island, Destin and Panama City, and for eleven down the peninsula: the northern and southern Greater Tampa area, Anna Maria Island, Siesta Key, Osprey and Venice, Englewood, Don Pedro Island and Boca Grande, Captiva Island, Sanibel Island, Naples and Marco Island. There is none for Walton, Gulf or Franklin County, none for the Big Bend and the Nature Coast from Wakulla County to Pasco, and none for Charlotte Harbor’s inner shore, Fort Myers or Everglades City. Read them as the outer edge of what is possible, not as a forecast. Escambia County also publishes a tsunami evacuation route map for Pensacola.

What the alert levels mean

In the warning centre’s own definitions and recommended actions:

Getting an official alert

Wireless Emergency Alerts come to a capable phone with nothing to sign up for — the weather service’s words are “No signup is required!” — and it sends them for tsunami warnings, hurricanes and storm surge. They are short. The longer local messages come from county systems, and those you have to register for.

The county sign-ups (the Panhandle’s read September 30, 2026, the rest October 4, 2026):

If you are not sure which system covers your address, ask your county’s emergency management office.

The water that usually does the harm here

On this coast the dangerous rise in the sea is almost always storm surge from a tropical storm or hurricane. The National Hurricane Center calls storm surge “currently the leading cause of fatalities from hurricanes” and says all locations on the Gulf coast are vulnerable to it. That is the Weather tile’s job and the weather service’s storm surge and hurricane warnings’, not this tile’s. Before a storm, the county emergency management office is the one that orders evacuations by zone.

Find your evacuation zone on the Florida Division of Emergency Management’s Know Your Zone page, or on your county’s: Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Bay and Gulf, Taylor, Levy, Pasco, Pinellas, Charlotte, Lee and Collier. Sarasota County calls its zones evacuation levels. Franklin County’s emergency management office says the county has no storm shelters because the entire county is in a surge zone.

Sources