Panama City storm & claim resource

Hurricane Michael made landfall near Mexico Beach in October 2018 as a Category 5 and drove its eyewall directly over Panama City and Bay County — the strongest storm to hit the Panhandle in the modern record. Decades earlier, Eloise came ashore near Panama City Beach in 1975 and Opal battered the coast in 1995. St. Andrews Bay funnels surge into the Cove, downtown, and Lynn Haven while the barrier beaches take the waves. The resulting claims raise the hardest question in Florida property insurance: which storm, and which peril, owes for the damage?

What Panama City claims turn on

Surge is flood, and flood is excluded from every homeowners policy — it needs NFIP or private flood coverage. Wind is covered, behind a hurricane deductible that is a percentage of the home’s insured value, not the loss. In a violent-wind event like Michael, most of the loss is wind — but where surge also entered, the wind carrier and the flood carrier each point at the other. Years later, many Bay County policyholders are still fighting over underpaid roof, structure, and matching claims from that single storm.

The law here

Florida gives you one year from the date of loss to give notice of a hurricane claim and 18 months for a supplemental claim (§ 627.70132, as amended by SB 2-A in 2023), and the carrier must pay or deny within 60 days of a complete proof of loss (§ 627.70131). For storms that are already years past, those notice windows have generally closed — but a claim you already filed that was denied or underpaid can still have options, and the deadline to sue on a filed claim is longer. These are general figures — confirm the current statutes and your own dates with counsel before relying on them.