A hurricane is the rare emergency that introduces itself days in advance. That warning time is the whole ballgame: used well, it turns a frightening forecast into a series of calm, ordinary tasks. Used badly — spent in a last-day scramble for the same twelve items everyone else wants — it is gone. Here is the storm in three acts, and what each one actually asks of you.
What a hurricane really threatens
Wind gets the headlines, but water does the damage. Storm surge pushes the sea into streets and ground floors along the coast; inland, days of rain flood rivers, roads and basements far from any beach. Then come the outages — a major storm can leave a region dark for days or weeks, in heat, with roads blocked and stores closed. Plan for all three: water first, wind second, and a long, hot, offline stretch after both.
Days before: the calm list
- Water: one gallon per person per day, for at least three days — drinking first, then washing. Buy it early or fill containers at home; both are cheap on day four-before and impossible on day one-before.
- Food you can eat cold: three days of it, plus a manual can opener. Our First 72 Hours checklist lays the whole shelf out in order.
- Fuel and cash: fill the car's tank and keep small bills on hand. Card readers and pumps need power and networks; early in the week, both still have them.
- Documents and medicines: IDs, insurance papers and prescriptions in one waterproof bag you can grab. Refill anything that runs out this week, this week.
- Charge everything: phones, power banks, flashlights, the radio. Then stop using the reserves — they are for after.
Decide early: stay or go
This is the one decision that cannot be made at the last minute. If you live in an evacuation zone, near the coast, or in a mobile home, the answer is go — early, while the roads are still roads, to a friend's inland address or a public shelter. If officials order an evacuation for your zone, that order is the decision. Staying makes sense only in a solid house, above flood reach, with the full three days of supplies above already in it. Either way, tell family which one you chose and where you will be — and if you are driving out, the car kit guide covers what rides in the trunk.
The day before: outside in
Walk the property once: patio furniture, bins, grills, toys — anything the wind can pick up comes inside or gets tied down. Close storm shutters if the house has them. Move the car to the highest ground available, not under a tree. Fill the bathtub and every large pot (that is flushing and washing water), freeze bottles of water to turn the fridge into a cooler, and set the fridge and freezer to their coldest. Then stop. The house is as ready as it is going to get, and the remaining hours belong to rest.
During: the water rules
- Stay inside, away from windows, in an interior room on the lowest floor that is not at flood risk. The quiet in the middle is the eye passing, not the end — the wind returns from the other direction.
- Never walk or drive through floodwater. Six inches of moving water knocks an adult down; a foot of it floats a car. It also hides washed-out road, open manholes and downed lines. There is no errand worth it.
- Treat all floodwater as contaminated — because it is, with fuel, sewage and chemicals. If it enters the house, keep children and pets out of it entirely.
- Information, sparingly: official forecasts and evacuation news come from the National Hurricane Center and local authorities. Follow them on your phone while you have signal and battery, and keep a battery or hand-crank radio as the no-network fallback — our Portable Multifunctional Emergency Device covers local FM broadcasts and can top up a phone by crank. Its honest limit: no NOAA weather band, so it is the backup for storm news, not the primary source.
After: the long, hot tail
The sky clears and the harder week begins. Assume the power is out for days: keep the fridge closed (four hours of safe cold, roughly forty-eight for a full freezer), eat perishables in order, and obey boil-water notices without exception. If you run a generator, it lives outside — twenty feet from the house, never in a garage; carbon monoxide kills more people after storms than most storms do. A folding solar charger earns its shelf space in this stretch, when the sun is back and the grid is not. Expect injuries to be mundane — debris cuts, ladder falls, chainsaw accidents — which is why the first aid kit is stocked before the season, not after it. And wait for the official all-clear before driving anywhere: a road can look merely wet and be gone underneath.
The season, not the storm
Hurricane season runs June through November, peaking in late summer. The households that handle it well are not the ones with the most gear — they are the ones who did the boring parts in May: water stored, documents bagged, the stay-or-go decision made in principle, the kit checked once a year. Do it on a calm weekend and the forecast, when it comes, is mostly weather. The 72-hour checklist is the place to start.