19-05-2025
As hurricane season approaches, Trump's Winter White House is ready for almost any storm
Hurricane season is afoot, but President Donald Trump's Winter White House is likely ready to withstand any bad storms.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami has already started its daily tropical outlooks for the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs June 1 to Nov. 30 every year.
Earlier this month, Trump's private club, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, closed just after Mother's Day. It reopens in the fall, when the social season begins. Since taking office again in January, Trump has visited his home state of Florida 11 times, with 10 visits to Mar-a-Lago.
Even if the president doesn't have to worry about evacuating himself, the estate has withstood every hurricane with minimal damage since its construction in 1927. Here is what to know:
Season in review: Palm Beach real estate saw a 'Trump bump' but there was turbulence ahead
Mar-a-Lago is something like a fortress.
The house is literally rock solid: Concrete and steel anchor the structure to the coral reef below it. Many of the walls are 3 feet thick.
'This place will not move,' the late Tony Senecal, who for years served as Trump's butler at Mar-a-Lago, said in 2005. 'That's why, during a hurricane, you'll always see me here. If it goes, I'll go with it.'
Mar-a-Lago's stucco-covered walls have remained standing after every hurricane.
In 1928, a massive storm wreaked havoc on South Florida's coast. Most of the damage at Mar-a-Lago was said to be confined to uprooted trees, although there was damage to the mansion's famous Roman-style window.
The mansion weathered another hurricane in 1947 that flooded the neighborhood and points south, and washed away much of the coastal road.
It also withstood the double whammy of back-to-back Hurricane Frances and Hurricane Jeanne in 2004.
'We lost a lot of the vegetation that gave Mar-a-Lago its character,' Trump told the Palm Beach Post after Hurricane Frances. 'I wasn't there for the storm, but I've been told by my people there that it re-landscaped the place. There was a little flooding in some of the basements, too.'
In 2005 came Hurricane Wilma, which surprised locals with its strength when it barreled in from the west.
An investigation by the Associated Press in 2016 found little evidence that Hurricane Wilma severely damaged Mar-a-Lago, despite Trump saying in a 2007 court deposition that he had been paid $17 million on an insurance claim after the storm.
In September 2017, a part of the main club building sustained roof damage and minor roof leaks when the outer bands of Hurricane Irma swept Palm Beach. In addition, several trees were knocked down and landscaping was thinned along the property's south wall. Town officials at the time confirmed they had received no reports of structural damage to Mar-a-Lago or any building on the island.
Post Cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post was Mrs. Edward F. Hutton when she commissioned Marion Sims Wyeth to build her a 58-bedroom Spanish-Moorish-Portuguese-Venetian palace on 17 acres of jungle between the ocean and the Intracoastal.
By the time it was finished in 1927, Joseph Urban, a Viennese architect and theater designer, had provided much of the ornamentation.
For more than three years, 600 workers labored to build Mar-a-Lago, using boatloads of Italian stone and about 36,000 antique Spanish and Portuguese tiles, as well as old marble floors and roof tiles from Cuba. The estate's 75-foot tower is a South Florida landmark — and a navigational aid to boaters.
When she died in 1973, Post gave Mar-a-Lago to the U.S. government for a presidential retreat, but the government balked at its million-dollar-a-year maintenance cost and its location under the Palm Beach International Airport's flight path.
In 1985, Donald Trump paid $10 million for the 17-acre estate. It originally boasted 33 bathrooms, three bomb shelters and a nine-hole golf course.
Ten years later, Trump updated the already-luxurious estate and converted it into an even-more ritzy private club with a spa, tennis and croquet courts, ballroom and a beach club.
Contributing: Cheryl McCloud, USA TODAY Network, Antonio Fins, Palm Beach Post, and Carol Rose, Palm Beach Daily News
Kinsey Crowley is the Trump Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at kcrowley@ Follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley or Bluesky at @
Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate in his weekly 'Beyond the Hedges' column. He welcomes tips about real estate news on the island. Email dhofheinz@ call (561) 820-3831 or tweet @PBDN_Hofheinz
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Hurricane season 2025: Mar-a-Lago is ready with 3-feet-thick walls
