As partners, emergency managers play a critical role in helping the National Weather Service achieve its mission to protect lives and property. This is especially evident in severe weather events, such as hurricanes. Several projects are underway at NWS to improve both hurricane forecasts and the communication of hurricane messages. An important part of this work is to better understand how key stakeholders, such as emergency managers, receive, use and assess current products – and what improvements they feel would be most useful. We present results of a survey of coastal emergency managers undertaken as part of the social science work associated with the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program and the Surge Roadmap Project. Emergency managers in coastal counties along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts from North Carolina to Texas were asked to participate in this web-based survey. The objectives were to: 1) Understand how they assess the hurricane hazard vulnerabilities of their jurisdictions, particularly in relation to storm surge; 2) Describe how they use current hurricane forecast products in their work; and 3) Determine what changes or additions they believe would be most useful to their mission.