Tropical storm Gonzalo reached Sal on Friday 25 September 2026. Parts of Santa Maria flooded, the seafront road where most of the hotels stand went under water, and a fair amount along the coast was knocked down. Nobody was killed. Three weeks on, a few spots are still being cleared.
What happened?
Gonzalo formed overnight from Thursday to Friday, out of a low pressure system over the Atlantic between Cape Verde and Senegal. The US National Hurricane Center upgraded it to a tropical storm.
The storm itself never crossed the island. Strong gusts and a heavy swell did the damage instead, pushing the sea into the streets just as the tide was already high. That is why Santa Maria in particular was hit: the town sits low and flat right on the beach.
Civil protection had issued a warning in advance. Teams were posted across the island and stayed until the swell eased. Fire crews, the national police and the municipal police had all been reinforced, mostly in Santa Maria. Hidércio Gomes, who heads civil protection on Sal, called the sea conditions unprecedented for the island.
What was damaged?
Most of the damage was in and around Santa Maria:
- The hotel seafront flooded, along with several other parts of Santa Maria.
- The Calçadão, the promenade along the beach, was damaged by the waves and the wind.
- Trees came down, street lamps were damaged and construction fencing around building sites was blown over.
- A clinic on one of the main streets was left standing in water, according to a local resident.
There were no casualties. Nor have there been any reports of structural damage to hotels, the airport or utilities. This was coastal flooding, not a devastated island.
How do things look now?
Most of Santa Maria is running as normal. Hotels are open, the airport is operating, and restaurants and shops are trading as usual.
What you will still see is clean-up work along the coast. The promenade and the area right behind the beach are last in line, simply because that is where most of the sand and debris ended up, and because relaying paving takes longer than removing a fallen tree. Here and there a section is still cordoned off.
Santa Maria, 13 October 2026: beach shack cordoned off.
Along the shore, beach shacks and similar light structures are still broken, three weeks after the storm, neither repaired nor removed. That is what remains visible of Gonzalo: not the hotels or the roads, but whatever stood loose and light by the water.
Driftwood on the beach, three weeks after Gonzalo.
How often does this happen?
Cape Verde lies where the Atlantic hurricane season begins. So many systems form here that meteorologists named a whole category after the islands: Cape Verde hurricanes. They normally head west across the ocean and only become dangerous once they reach the Caribbean and the United States.
It is rare for one to hit the islands themselves, but it does happen. In August 2025 tropical storm Erin passed over São Vicente and Santo Antão, killing eight people, washing away roads and destroying homes. That was a far more serious event than Gonzalo, and on different islands.
The storm season runs from June to November and peaks in August and September. What weather to expect in each month is set out in the month-by-month overview. If you travel in those months, take out travel insurance and follow the warnings from civil protection; see also safety in Cape Verde. For the rest of the year it hardly comes into play.
Four days after Gonzalo, on 29 September 2026, Cape Verde adopted a national roadmap for early warnings in Praia, under the UN initiative Early Warnings for All. With Gonzalo, the warning came in time.