All About Hurricanes

Preparing for a Hurricane

General Preparations

When we change our clocks to and from Daylight Savings Time in the Spring and Fall, local fire departments encourage us to change out the batteries in our smoke alarms. When June rolls around in New Orleans, we regularly do things to get ready for the coming storm season:

When a hurricane forms

Things get a bit more tense than just general readiness when a storm actually develops. The general attitude is not one of panic, but the storm becomes one of the topics for lunch time conversation, such as “Is the storm moving towards us? Has it picked up speed or strength?” When that talk starts, we increase our interest in things around the house and neighborhood:

When the hurricane enters the Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf is a small body of water compared to the hurricane’s spawning ground in the ocean. When a storm enters the Gulf, it can turn in just about any direction and hit any part of the coast. Now the interest in the storm’s location changes from looking up at the noon news to people checking the every-other-hour updates from the NWS on the radio. This is when many folks also start recording the storm's location on a hurricane tracking chart. Hurricanes usually move at a rate of 10-15 miles per hour, so most areas have a bit of warning as to when a storm is coming. Some storms have been known to move at speeds almost double the typical rates, and others creep along at less than 10mph. Still, a storm that forms 300 miles out in the Gulf is going to take 10-20 hours to make landfall on the coast. That's an eternity compared to the warning Californians get for an earthquake. By this point, you should have the following things done:

You'll also want to make a trip to the grocery and/or the hardware store to pick up the following:

Hurricane Watch

When the NHC issues a "Hurricane Watch", this means the storm will make landfall within a certain area, normally within 24 hours of the start of the Watch. The areas listed in a Hurricane Watch are fairly wide, such as Lake Charles, Louisiana to Pensacola, Florida. If your neighborhood is included in a Hurricane Watch area, you can count on some bad weather at a minimum, gale-force winds (30+mph), high water/flash flood situations, and possibly tornadoes that are spawned by the hurricane. In other words, you may not get 100+mph winds, but you're going to have a nasty time of it. You still have time to get the checklist items up to now done, but you have to get moving. You now should also do the following:

Hurricane Warning

As the storm nears the coast, the NHC issues a "Hurricane Warning." This is it--you're getting a significant piece of the storm if you're in this area. Low-lying areas (such as Grande Isle) are ordered evacuated. If you haven't hit the grocery and/or the hardware store, you're going to have to wait in line. The storm is less than 24 hours away, and you've got lots still to do:

Move On to "Evacuating vs. Riding the Storm Out," the next file in this series.


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