diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 7d27d694e..8269337df 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+build
 tivan
 .vagrant
 /telegraf
diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 2b917c5cf..244216bef 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -37,6 +37,7 @@ should now look like:
 
 ### Bugfixes
 
+- [#1426](https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/pull/1426): nil metrics panic fix.
 - [#1384](https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/pull/1384): Fix datarace in apache input plugin.
 - [#1399](https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/issues/1399): Add `read_repairs` statistics to riak plugin.
 - [#1405](https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/issues/1405): Fix memory/connection leak in prometheus input plugin.
diff --git a/internal/models/running_output.go b/internal/models/running_output.go
index d0d2abbc1..42025912c 100644
--- a/internal/models/running_output.go
+++ b/internal/models/running_output.go
@@ -138,7 +138,7 @@ func (ro *RunningOutput) Write() error {
 }
 
 func (ro *RunningOutput) write(metrics []telegraf.Metric) error {
-	if len(metrics) == 0 {
+	if metrics == nil || len(metrics) == 0 {
 		return nil
 	}
 	start := time.Now()
diff --git a/plugins/serializers/graphite/graphite.go b/plugins/serializers/graphite/graphite.go
index bf2e75579..43e32c244 100644
--- a/plugins/serializers/graphite/graphite.go
+++ b/plugins/serializers/graphite/graphite.go
@@ -26,6 +26,9 @@ func (s *GraphiteSerializer) Serialize(metric telegraf.Metric) ([]string, error)
 	timestamp := metric.UnixNano() / 1000000000
 
 	bucket := s.SerializeBucketName(metric.Name(), metric.Tags())
+	if bucket == "" {
+		return out, nil
+	}
 
 	for fieldName, value := range metric.Fields() {
 		// Convert value to string
@@ -89,6 +92,10 @@ func (s *GraphiteSerializer) SerializeBucketName(
 		}
 	}
 
+	if len(out) == 0 {
+		return ""
+	}
+
 	if s.Prefix == "" {
 		return sanitizedChars.Replace(strings.Join(out, "."))
 	}