Piles of debris on street side in Manasota Key, Florida aafter Hurricane Milton. Source: Shutterstock.com
As a growing storm rolled towards Florida in October 2024, many Spanish-speaking residents were asked to prepare for something completely unfamiliar to them.
“It was the most terrible experience. I had never experienced a hurricane before. I didn’t understand the magnitude of what was coming,” said one Spanish speaking resident in Tampa Bay.
When Hurricane Milton made landfall, it brought powerful winds, widespread flooding, and a tornado outbreak that caused significant damage to homes, businesses, and infrastructure across the region. Millions of people were affected, including many in communities with higher proportions of Hispanic residents.
To better understand the local complexities of weather risk communication, I interviewed 25 Spanish speakers in the Tampa Bay area a year after the storm. Despite recent state- and national-level efforts to make weather information more accessible for Spanish speakers, many said they felt unprepared for Milton. My research suggests translation alone often fails to address the cultural context, prior experiences, and real-life barriers that shape how people understand weather warnings and decide to protect themselves.
Efforts to Improve Bilingual Weather Risk Communication
Because Spanish is the second most spoken language in the United States, providing Spanish alerts is a critical component of an effective and inclusive public emergency warning system. In recent years, there have been improvements in Spanish-language weather communication in both media and public safety agencies. Latino meteorologists and scholars from many different disciplinary backgrounds have played an important role in advocating for clearer Spanish terminology and more inclusive risk communication. In addition, recent research and outreach initiatives have demonstrated that effective translation can improve how Spanish speakers interpret warnings and make protective action decisions during hazardous weather events.
Before Hurricane Milton made landfall, many of the Spanish speaking residents I interviewed described receiving hurricane alerts and warnings from multiple sources, including television forecasts, social media, text alerts, and messages shared through family, friends, and community groups. Receiving weather information in Spanish made a meaningful difference. They indicated that Spanish-language alerts helped them better understand the situation, increased their trust in the information, and made them feel more confident about how to prepare and appropriately respond.
However, translation alone is not enough. In my previous work on tornado forecasts and warnings, I found that Spanish speakers still remain less likely to understand, receive, and respond to severe weather risk information in comparison to English speakers. Even when translated alerts are available, research suggests that translations may be unclear or inconsistent.
Critically, people’s ability to act on warnings is shaped by more than language. Truly effective and inclusive weather risk communication goes beyond simply changing words from English to Spanish. It also entails a deep understanding of people, place, and systemic barriers to taking action.
How Experience, Fear, and Support Guided Decisions
Many residents I spoke in Tampa Bay immigrated to the U.S. from countries with different natural hazards contexts. Several said they were more familiar with earthquakes, flooding, or heavy rain in their home countries. Without prior experience or clear guidance on hurricanes, some expressed uncertainty about evacuation zones, transportation options, and potential impacts.
Emotions also played an important role in how people prepared and responded. Fear of the storm, concern for children and older relatives, and a sense of responsibility toward family influenced many decisions. Some participants described stocking up on food and water, monitoring updates closely, or temporarily staying with relatives or friends in safer locations. Even when they understood the warnings, some chose to stay home because they were uncertain about evacuation shelters or worried about transportation, costs, or leaving belongings behind. In many cases, faith, prayer, and support from friends helped people cope with uncertainty as the storm approached.
Personal networks and community-based organizations played an important role in helping people navigate these challenges by explaining unfamiliar concepts and providing resources to facilitate response and recovery. Some participants relied on friends, neighbors, or coworkers who had more experience with hurricanes, particularly people from Caribbean islands like Puerto Rico or Cuba. In some cases, these individuals helped translate weather information into practical guidance for preparedness.
Designing More Inclusive Alerts
Understanding how Spanish speakers respond to weather hazards requires looking beyond language and recognizing the role of lived experiences, culture, emotions, and everyday realities. People interpret warnings through personal histories, family responsibilities, community networks, and past encounters with risk.
Strengthening collaborations with partners in Latin America, incorporating Spanish-language Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), expanding multilingual coverage in broadcast markets, and developing educational materials that explain fundamental weather hazards in the United States are foundational measures to advance risk communication for Spanish speakers. Weather agencies and public safety authorities can improve their reach in Hispanic and Latinx communities by building relationships through partnerships with trusted local organizations, community-informed message development, and outreach to identify knowledge gaps and barriers to protective action. Beyond that, it is important to avoid homogenizing Spanish speakers. Truly effective weather risk communication will demand personalized and localized approaches for communities with different populations and hazards.
A more holistic approach to weather communication must account for the cultural context and the emotional and material barriers that shape understanding and decision making during extreme weather. Ensuring that people are properly informed and protected, regardless of language, is critical to saving lives when the next hurricane hits.
América Rosario Gaviria Pabón, PhD, is a researcher in geography and environmental sustainability whose work focuses on how people understand and respond to weather warnings. She studies how language, culture, and personal experiences shape decision-making during storms, especially in Spanish-speaking communities. Her research aims to make weather information clearer, more accessible, and more useful so that people can make safer decisions during severe weather events.