Hurricane Delays: The Storm Isn't the Claim
Nobody argues about the days a named hurricane closes the site. They argue about the fortnight afterwards, when the sky is clear, the crews are back, and the ground still will not carry a loaded truck. That is where hurricane delay claims are actually won and lost.
Which limb you plead under changes what you must prove
This is the part most contractors get backwards. AIA A201-2017 §8.3.1 extends the Contract Time where the contractor is delayed by, among other things, "labor disputes, fire, unusual delay in deliveries, unavoidable casualties, adverse weather conditions documented in accordance with Section 15.1.6.2, or other causes beyond the Contractor's control."
Read the list carefully. "Unavoidable casualties" and "adverse weather conditions" are separate items. Only the adverse-weather item carries the cross-reference to §15.1.6.2 — and §15.1.6.2 is where the obligation to prove the weather was abnormal for the period lives.
So a named hurricane pleaded as an unavoidable casualty does not oblige you to produce a ten-year baseline demonstrating that a Category 2 landfall was unusual. That argument is self-evident and no owner seriously contests it. The federal clauses draw the same distinction from the other direction: FAR 52.249-10 lists "acts of God" and "unusually severe weather" as separate excusable causes in a single sentence.
The consequence is practical. Do not spend your effort proving the hurricane happened. Spend it on the days either side of it, which are ordinary adverse weather, carry the full documentation burden, and are the only days anyone is going to fight you over.
What a hurricane actually costs: Charlotte, September 2018
Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wrightsville Beach on 14 September 2018, then stalled over the Carolinas. Charlotte took roughly ten inches of rain — heavy, but Charlotte is 200 miles inland and was never in the worst of it.
| Charlotte, September 2018 | |
|---|---|
| Lost workdays, September 2018 | 17 |
| Ten-year September norm | 8 |
| Abnormal above | 13 |
| Governing soil | Clay, 3.0-day drying clock |
September has about 21 workdays. Charlotte lost 17 of them, and Florence did not arrive until the 14th. The storm itself accounts for two or three of those days. The remainder is a site that stayed untrafficable while clay released water it had absorbed over 48 hours of rain.
That ratio is the whole point. A delay narrative built around "we lost the week of the hurricane" leaves most of the entitlement on the table. A narrative built around "the site was untrafficable from the 13th through the end of the month, and here is the soil evidence for each day" is a different claim entirely.
The monthly average is the wrong number on the coast
In hurricane-exposed metros, September does not have a typical value. It has two values — quiet years and storm years — and almost nothing in between. Charlotte's ten Septembers, sorted:
0 4 6 7 8 9 10 11 11 17
The mean is 8. September has essentially never been 8. A schedule that carries the average is carrying a number that has not occurred in a decade, and it will be wrong in both directions — over-reserved in a quiet year, catastrophically under-reserved in a storm year.
| Metro | Soil | Sep mean | Abnormal above | Actual range, 2016–2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Orleans, LA | Clay | 10 | 16 | 0 – 18 |
| Charlotte, NC | Clay | 8 | 13 | 0 – 17 |
| Houston, TX | Clay | 10 | 15 | 0 – 16 |
| Raleigh-Durham, NC | Clay | 7 | 11 | 1 – 16 |
| Orlando, FL | Sand | 9 | 12 | 5 – 14 |
| Jacksonville, FL | Sand | 6 | 9 | 3 – 13 |
| Tampa, FL | Sand | 6 | 10 | 1 – 11 |
| Charleston, SC | Sand | 4 | 7 | 0 – 7 |
The per-year figures behind every one of these are published, free, so the distribution can be checked rather than taken on trust — see weather delay days by metro.
The aftermath argument is a clay argument
Being straight about where this reasoning applies and where it does not: the drying tail is what makes the aftermath claimable, and the drying tail is a function of soil.
- Clay markets — Charlotte, Raleigh, Houston, New Orleans — carry a three-day drying clock per rain event. After a stalled tropical system the ground can stay untrafficable for one to three weeks. Here the aftermath is most of the claim, and the spread between quiet and storm Septembers is enormous.
- Sandy coastal markets — Tampa, Jacksonville, Charleston, Miami — drain fast enough that the model assigns essentially no drying tail. On those sites the claim really is close to just the storm days, and the variance between years is correspondingly narrower. Look at the table: Charleston's range is 0 to 7, while Charlotte's is 0 to 17.
If you are on Florida sand, the argument in this article is worth less to you than it is to a contractor 200 miles inland on piedmont clay. That is a genuine limit, and it is better stated than discovered.
The notice clock runs while you are still clearing the site
This is how good claims die after a hurricane. The week following landfall is spent on generators, road access, accounting for crews and securing materials — not on drafting notice. Meanwhile:
| Document | Notice deadline |
|---|---|
| FAR 52.249-10 (federal fixed-price construction) | 10 days from the beginning of the delay |
| ConsensusDocs 200 §8.4 | 14 days to claim, +21 to document |
| AIA A201-2017 §15.1.3 | 21 days |
Ten days on a federal job begins at the first unworkable day, not when the power comes back. Send a short written notice identifying the event, the dates and the affected activities as soon as you have a working laptop. The analysis can follow; the deadline cannot be recovered.
What to document, in order
- The storm days — trivially provable, rarely contested, and the smallest part of the claim.
- Every day after, individually. Standing water, rutting, failed proofrolls, a loaded truck that could not reach the pad. Photographs with dates. A daily log that goes quiet after the storm reads as a site that chose not to work.
- The soil basis — the governing soil type and its drying characteristics, which is what makes "the ground was still saturated on the 24th" a technical statement rather than an assertion.
- The baseline — not to prove the hurricane was abnormal, but to show what the month should have cost you, so the excess is quantified.
- Critical path impact. Under every form above, weather that hits work with float extends nothing.
Get the baseline before the season does
Ilystics generates an Anticipated Weather Exhibit for your exact jobsite: ten-year NOAA baseline, per-year distribution rather than a single average, and USDA soil drying analysis. Free, no account.
Generate a Free ExhibitAlready documenting a storm period? Request a $249 Claim Report for the day-by-day actual-vs-baseline analysis.
Ilystics provides weather and soil analysis, not legal advice. Clause references are to AIA Document A201-2017, FAR 52.249-10 and ConsensusDocs 200, and are provided for general orientation only — your contract, its supplementary conditions, and your jurisdiction control, and many coastal contracts contain named-storm or hurricane-specific provisions that displace the general language discussed here. Ilystics is not affiliated with the AIA. This model measures soil trafficability from observed station data; it does not forecast tropical activity and makes no prediction about any future storm. Consult your attorney or claims consultant on entitlement.