Will GTA 6 Have Real Hurricanes and Weather Events?

A Florida-inspired open world without any weather to speak of would feel like a missed opportunity, and the good news is Rockstar clearly agrees. The first official trailer alone showed rain, wind, cloud movement, and ocean interaction rendered in enough detail that weather is obviously meant to be more than a cosmetic backdrop. The bigger question for months was whether that extends all the way to full hurricanes. As of the Game Informer cover story in late September 2026, it does.

Update, October 7, 2026: Game Informer’s GTA 6 cover story confirmed that tropical storms and hurricanes are in the game. This article has been rewritten to reflect that.

The weather system itself has been rebuilt on top of the technology Rockstar developed for Red Dead Redemption 2. According to the feature, weather in Leonida is now more local and more persistent than in any previous GTA. Clouds form and move across the state, so it can be pouring in one region while another stays dry, and the effects of a storm don’t vanish when it passes: puddles and wet surfaces stick around afterwards. Wind has been reworked too, with offshore breezes after sunset and updrafts that interact with buildings.

Tropical storms and hurricanes are both confirmed, and the description of a hurricane is vivid: heavy cloud, strong wind, dense atmosphere, water pouring off roofs and lampposts, thunder and lightning lighting up the sky. For a game set in a fictional Florida, it would have been strange to leave them out.

What Rockstar hasn’t said is how hurricanes work as gameplay. We don’t know how often they happen, whether they’re random or tied to story moments, or how much they disrupt things like boats, aircraft and traffic. Earlier reporting suggested the studio had wanted full storm events, including tornadoes, from early in development. Hurricanes clearly made it. There’s no word on tornadoes, so treat those as unconfirmed.

The safest way to frame this going into launch: expect a weather system well beyond anything the series has done before, with real storms that change how the world looks and feels, and hurricanes as a confirmed part of it. How much a hurricane changes your evening in Vice City is the part we’ll only learn on November 19. For the rest of what the feature revealed about Leonida, including its wildlife, see our full breakdown.