diff --git a/cmd/prometheus/main.go b/cmd/prometheus/main.go
index cdb85f13b7..a72d26b359 100644
--- a/cmd/prometheus/main.go
+++ b/cmd/prometheus/main.go
@@ -78,6 +78,11 @@ func Main() int {
 		reloadables []Reloadable
 	)
 
+	// Make sure that sighup handler is registered with a redirect to the channel before the potentially
+	// long and synchronous tsdb init.
+	hup := make(chan os.Signal)
+	hupReady := make(chan bool)
+	signal.Notify(hup, syscall.SIGHUP)
 	localStorage, err := tsdb.Open(cfg.localStoragePath, prometheus.DefaultRegisterer, &cfg.tsdb)
 	if err != nil {
 		log.Errorf("Opening storage failed: %s", err)
@@ -136,9 +141,6 @@ func Main() int {
 	// Wait for reload or termination signals. Start the handler for SIGHUP as
 	// early as possible, but ignore it until we are ready to handle reloading
 	// our config.
-	hup := make(chan os.Signal)
-	hupReady := make(chan bool)
-	signal.Notify(hup, syscall.SIGHUP)
 	go func() {
 		<-hupReady
 		for {