Hurricanes are stressful. Stress breaks down your emotional connection with your partner and that when its time to seak a couples therapist or marriage coach. Use hurricane preparation for the storm as a goal that brings you both together.
Successful couples tackle problems as a team. Stressed out couples crack under the burden for preparing for a hurricane.
There is no right or wrong answer. Some people like to ride it out. Others evacuate at the first sign of trouble. How much money can you invest in preparation or evacuation? What are the tasks? Who is responsible for what tasks?
Schedule a time to sit down with your partner and discuss what you have and what you would need for hurricane preparation. This is the perfect time to practice “Captian of the Ship,” assigning who is in charge of what?
Now you may not know what you need. Especially if you have never camped before. Below is a guide of my top hurricane preparation advice. I’m sure there is something for the seasoned pro. It is written for the couple who recently relocated to Miami and this may be their first storm season.
My first hurricane
You always remember the empty chaos and silent, still the terror of your first storm threat, mine was Floyd. I was working and not paying any attention to the forecast until my retail store was closing and co-workers told me to get prepared for a hurricane. I literally had no idea what to do. It was a beautiful sunny day. It didn’t feel like anything was wrong at all.
My boss went back into the break room and came out with an empty five-gallon water jug and handed it to me, “Here, you’ll need this.” I took it with a confused look on my face.
I went to Publix and saw the water and canned food isle picked clean. It felt like I had been robbed, burglarized as if I walked out and found my car stolen from where I parked it. There were two dented cans of Healthy Choice low-sodium soup, so I took them. There was no water. I never have conceived of running out of food or gasoline. The lines at the gas station formed out of nowhere and went on forever. These were problems of third world countries, not the United States of America.
I went back to my apartment and waited. Floyd then like hurricane Matthew a few years back and now Dorian stayed offshore from South Florida. They pivoted North and East away from me. From that day, I promised myself to never get caught unprepared again. I have also been a fan of forecasting ocean conditions for scuba diving and hurricanes as an extension of that.
As a hobby now that I am a homeowner, I am always looking at what the next step is to be more prepared and more comfortable in the next storm. This overlaps my passion for camping, as I enjoy the minimalist lifestyle. Hurricanes to me are preparing to camp at home.
Weather forecast
Hurricanes are unpredictable. Weather generally moves from west to east in Florida. Storms coming up the coast scare me more because the default weather pattern will push the storm east, closer to me. Storms coming up the East Coast often are pushed out to sea or stay off-shore. Katrina was a surprise because it made a hard left turn from the Bahamas into Fort Lauderdale and then went into the Gulf.
Hurricanes affect you differently depending on which side of it you are on. Obviously, the center is the worst due to the most powerful winds over the longest period of time. The northwest quadrant is the next worse because it is the “wet” side of the hurricane. They spin counter-clockwise so all the water gets picked up from the ocean and slammed into that side first. Storms heading for the Keys or the West Coast of Florida are usually smaller but are on the wet side and get a lot of rain, which weakens soil around tree roots so a little wind is enough to knock trees over in addition to flooding the streets.
The southeast quadrant is the windy dry side. The water has been smashed into the land and now the drier air has to go over warm water again to recharge and reload. Storms going up the East Coast cause more wind and less rain. It feels worse but there is generally less damage. The storm is over water more so there are bigger and more threatening. If they change course, it would be disastrous. Thankfully, most of the time to blow up and away from South Florida. A meteorologist in Tampa, Florida, gave the best advice: “You hide from the wind, you RUN from the water!”
If you live near the ocean in an evacuation zone, you have to be prepared with somewhere to go and all your preparedness needs to be PORTABLE. The water from the storm surge will kill you. You have to take everything with you. If you live further inland, you must be prepared to hunker down and hide from the wind. Even if the storm blows your roof off, you will be uncomfortable and scared to death but you will not die.
If you have experienced the “crazy” people fighting for water at Publix or waiting in line for gas for hours, put a price on that. How would you pay to never have to experience that: $100, $500, $10,000?
I invest several hundred dollars each year in preparedness and about $150 each year in perishable food, supplies, and gasoline. After December, I eat the food and pour the gas into my cars so that the money is not wasted. It does get set aside for six months just in case. To me, it is well worth it compared to preparing everything at the last minute.
There are three phases you go through with the hurricane preparation: the basic plan, replenishing perishable supplies and the final hunker down.
Phase one: Basic planning
You need to be able to survive for three days without services, including charging electronics like a headlight, phone or radio, water to drink and a way to cook. It can be small and portable if you need to evacuate or if you live in an apartment. It can be bigger if you have a garage or more room for storage. If you enjoy camping, you can buy gear that will serve a dual purpose and get more use than just for emergencies.
Batteries
1000VA Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS)
The power is going to fluctuate during the storms before it gets shut down. Keeping the internet up to entertain and keep you connected is very important. I recommend a big battery backup for just your internet modem so that you can take advantage of the battery in your devices. The internet nodes also have a battery backup that will keep them working for 12 hours after they lose power. You can also use them to plug in any device to charge it off the battery when the power goes out.
I recommend this first because it is useful every day, not just during storms. I have lost power for three hours in my house and was able to keep working because I had internet with battery backup. If you need to run off a generator later, the UPS will protect and keep the power clean to more sensitive electronic devices.
A smaller portable cell phone charger of 10,000 MA is a great backup for your phone and can power lights as well.
Light
Flashlights are great except you must do everything one-handed. Rechargeable batteries have come along ways and it is easy to keep everything standardized on USB to make recharging easy. First, make sure everyone has a rechargeable headlight. Young kids are notorious for leaving lights on and killing batteries. Rechargeable lights solve that problem too.
Next, you need a lantern for the table or to light up a room. There are small ones that plug into USB battery packs and can run for days or stand-alone.
I do not recommend solar unless you are investing in a whole house system and a battery bank. You cannot deploy enough solar to power a refrigerator and charge the battery pack at night. $500 will buy a powerful battery that will power the refrigerator for 4 to 6 hours and then you have no way to recharge it quickly? A small foldable solar panel will need 10 to 12 hours of full sun to refill the cellphone battery pack above. Its better than nothing, but mostly useless. I have one and used it on a four-day beach camping trip with limited success. I would suggest buying a 2nd battery pack or a bigger one with the money.
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