Circular Storms

Erin lives in hurricane territory and I live in tornado country. Both are destructive weather events, but they differ in several aspects while sharing a few others.

Hurricanes

Hurricanes generally emerge from the Atlantic Ocean (they're called typhoons if they are in the Pacific Ocean) and are huge storms that move fairly slowly carrying lots of rain and high winds. When a hurricane makes landfall it wreaks havoc over a wide area; “storm surge” is the term for waves carried along by the hurricane that are many times as high as normal waves, carrying seawater inland and adding to the flooding caused by the torrential rain. Hurricanes are classified by their sustained wind speeds rather than their footprint, making comparisons difficult; A concentrated, high-energy storm may cause more extensive damage in a smaller area but a slightly “weaker” storm that covers a wide area will cause more total damage. Think of it as a rifle versus a shotgun; you don't want to get hit by either one, but the rifle has a much narrower path of damage whereas shotguns can hit multiple targets.

Strength Classification

The hurricane classification system uses five “categories” of sustained winds stronger than a typical storm:

• A Tropical Depression is a storm with sustained winds below 38 mph.
• Between 39 and 74 mph, it's called a Tropical Storm.
• Between 74 and 95 mph, it's a Category (Cat) 1 hurricane.
• Between 96 and 110 is Cat 2.
• Between 111 and 129 is Cat 3.
• Between 130 and 156 is Cat 4.
• Anything over 157 mph is Cat 5.

Planning & Preparation

Hurricanes damage a wide area with wind and water, making recovery a state-level project. Restoring power is one of the main goals of hurricane recovery, since a large area is impacted and it's usually a heavily populated area as well. 

Preppers need to be able to take care of themselves and their families for days or weeks with limited power, services and transportation. Warnings are normally given a day to a week before the storm hits, so you can decide to leave or stay and you have time to top off supplies.

Tornadoes

Tornadoes are mostly a Great Plains weather event, as the conditions for their formation are unlikely in mountainous or forested areas. Hurricanes often spin off tornadoes to add insult to injury, so the two can be found together, but the singular or small cluster versions are more common in the Central Plains of the USA. Europe has smaller tornadoes and they're very rare, while those of us in Tornado Alley get multiple severe ones every year. Being far from the coasts, flooding is less of a problem, so most of the damage they inflict is from wind.

Strength Classification

Tornadoes are ranked by both wind speeds and damage potential. Named the Fujita (F) Scale after the scientist that created it, it's a scale from 0 to 5. Wind speeds are easy to measure, but damage is a bit more random, so the F scale is more of a “rule of thumb”.

• A normal thunderstorm will usually have winds under ~70 mph, with little to no rotation of the storm. Once it starts spinning on itself, the winds pick up rapidly and things start to fly.
• At 73 mph, we've hit F0 and can expect light damage to trees and buildings.
• Between 74 and 112 mph it's an F1. Shingles start leaving roofs, cars are pushed off roads, and mobile homes become more mobile.
• Between 113 and 157 mph it's an F2. Entire roofs are ripped off houses, train cars are knocked over, and large trees uprooted or snapped. Lawn furniture and light objects become missiles.
• Between 158 and 206 mph it's an F3. Walls start following the roofs into the air, locomotives are pushed over, and flying cars become reality.
• Between 207 and 260 mph it's an F4. Wood-frame buildings demolished, airborne missiles cause major damage.
• Between 261 and 318 mph it's an F5. Entire houses lifted into the air, car-sized missiles created by debris are common.

Looking at the two scales, you'll notice some overlap in wind speeds. A Cat 4 hurricane has roughly the same winds as a F2 tornado, as an example. The two aren't comparable, though, because a Cat 4 hurricane will have a diameter measured in dozens or hundreds of miles while any tornado will be measured in feet or yards (the largest tornado on record was about 1.5 miles in diameter). Tornadoes also have drastically shorter lifespans and paths; while a hurricane can last for a few days and travel a few hundred miles inland before dying out, most tornadoes last only a few minutes and travel a few miles. Hurricanes grow slowly and are tracked as they approach land, but tornadoes pop up suddenly, almost at random, and are over by the time they start to be tracked.

Planning and Preparation

Tornadoes devastate a small area with winds up to twice as high as a hurricane. The damage is more concentrated and more severe, meaning recovery is either minimal or impossible. 

Utilities are normally restored within hours or days, but if your house was in the path it may not exist any more. I've seen neighborhoods after a tornado, and you can have a house standing there with minor roof damage next to a vacant lot where his neighbor's house used to be. 

Warnings are given only slightly before (and sometimes after) the tornado hits. When conditions are ripe for their formation the local weather-people will give the normal watch/warning speeches, but like the little boy who cried “Wolf!” they are ignored. Local warning sirens are the best we have, and they give you minutes (at best) to find shelter. Having a suitable shelter close by and good insurance is about all you can do to prepare for a tornado.

Hurricane season has a few months left, but tornado season is drawing to a close. We had a fairly quiet summer in my area this year but we're still dealing with damage from last year's “inland hurricane” that hit a wide swath of the state with Cat 1 winds. Keep an eye on the sky, and research the weather patterns for your area, so  that you are less likely to be caught by surprise.    

The Recent Storm

We recently had a major storm roll across Iowa, and by storm I mean it was basically an inland hurricane with sustained winds of up to 130 mph. The folks on the east coast know what a hurricane does, but Iowa is about as land-locked as you can get. We deal with tornadoes every year; they blow through and leave a swath of destruction a few hundred yards wide and a few miles long. This storm, though -- the weather people are calling it a “derecho” -- was 60 miles wide and rampaged across almost 200 miles of the state. Tornadoes have rotating winds between 100-300 mph and pass in a few minutes, but this storm had straight-line winds of 70-130 mph sustained for at least 30 minutes. If you look online you can see the damage in satellite photos, it's that wide-spread.

10 million acres of crops were leveled; that's about 40% of the farm land in the state. Storage facilities were damaged or destroyed over a quarter of the state. Numbers are still being compiled, but I've seen estimates of between 20 and 30% of the storage capacity is just gone. My local Co-op has 62 locations around the state, and 24 of them are damaged or destroyed. Demolition crews are trying to clear debris and overhead hazards so the workers can try to salvage over a million bushels of grain that's sitting on the ground, and that's for just the one Co-op that I have contact with; there are dozens more in Iowa.

We're less than 45 days from the start of a normal harvest season, and it looks like it's going to be a tie between the destroyed crops and lack of places to store grain in a lot of places. It's been about 10 days, and there are still people without electricity trying to clean up their neighborhoods. Buildings and trees took a beating and there is debris still scattered in a lot of places. City services are minimal in some areas, water and waste treatment takes electricity, and generators aren't common for small town municipal plants.

I live outside the area that got blasted, so I get the opportunity to watch as others deal with this disaster. I hope to learn from the mistakes of others and get myself and my stuff ready for the time when I'm not so lucky. We had a nasty thunderstorm (over an inch of rain in 30 minutes and strong winds gusting over 70 mph) but sustained little damage. Some tree limbs went down, and a few windows popped out of their frames in one building at work, but nothing serious happened. Metal grain bins are built to handle gusts of up to 90 mph when empty (once they're full they're even stronger), so we didn't lose any around me.

Concrete silos are weather-proof, but are more prone to dust explosions and much more expensive to build. Look at the pictures of the aftermath of the massive explosion in Beruit, Lebanon for proof of the strength of concrete grain silos: half of the large elevator that was right next to the blast survived and shielded the buildings behind it.

What I've seen and learned so far:

• “Iowa nice” is a thing. No one is looting after a disaster, and people are helping each other all over the state.
• Opportunists are everywhere. People are buying $300 portable generators and selling them for twice that. They're also being called out for their price-gouging, and pubic shaming still works in small towns.
• Small engines, like portable generators, don't like gasoline with ethanol in it. Since Iowa is a major producer of ethanol for the petroleum industry, it can be a challenge to find “pure” gas for your generators. In less than 24 hours someone set up a website to track the availability of “pure” gas in some of the cities that got hit the hardest.
• Having an “all electric” house is a mistake. You might get a slight discount from the power company, but you end up without any way to heat water or cook your food if you don't have some redundancy. Personally, I hate cooking on electric stoves and will always use gas (LP or natural gas). The “Iowa nice” has kicked in here as neighbors are letting others into their houses to cook, or are cooking for those with all electric appliances.
• People with no experience in farming sound like total idiots when they try to report the news. Okay, they sound like more of an idiot than they normally do.
• Yes, most farmers have crop insurance, but in order to file a claim they have to harvest as much as they can and the insurance company will pay for the “lost” portion of yield. Harvesting corn that has fallen over takes special equipment that is neither common nor cheap, and it tends to plug up more often than a standard head, requiring a lot more time and effort and exposing workers to a lot more risk. We're going to have more injuries and deaths this harvest than normal.
• The crops that are still standing are hiding debris that will only be found once the combines hit the fields. More delays and equipment damage is likely when those million-dollar machines try to ingest a chunk of roofing or siding.
• Roads were cleared within a few hours of the storm. Residents did not wait for the government to take care of it, and instead they brought out their own chainsaws and tractors and got to work once the electric company got the downed power lines out of the way. I saw pictures of everything from snowplows on ATVs to full-size construction equipment being put to use before the government at any level had even finished their coffee.
• Iowa produces about 15% of the corn grown in the US, and half of that was destroyed. Expect higher food prices this winter as the shortage trickles through the economy. Losing 7% of the production of anything will have ripple effects.

The main thing that I've seen so far is the most basic: Life goes on. Even after a damaging storm, people keep going. Let's try to be ready to keep going as best we can, no matter what life throws at us.

Damaged Trees

Back in September, I wrote about the damage storms can do to trees and how to deal with downed ones. I finally got a chance to to talk to an arborist friend about damaged trees that are still standing, and he passed along some helpful tips in the form of questions to ask. He also mentioned that he gets more work from cleaning up after drunken/distracted drivers than he does storms, so there are multiple uses for this information.

Is the tree generally healthy? 
If it was struggling before the damage, it will have a poorer chance of recovery.

Is the trunk of the tree broken? 
Since the trunk is the main structural support of a tree, any serious damage to it will make the tree weak and unsafe. I have seen trees with splits in their trunks live a long time, but they rotted from the inside. Vertical breaks are not as bad as horizontal breaks or twisted trunks.

Are the major branches intact? 
If more than half of the main limbs or branches coming off of the trunk are broken, the tree will probably not survive and should be removed. Lost limbs take a lot of food and energy to replace.

Does the tree have enough leaves left on it? 
If more than half of the leaves and minor branches are gone, the tree won't be able to produce enough food to survive many more seasons.

How much of the bark is missing? 
Small tears in the bark on large trees is not a problem, but any time the bark is damaged or removed the tree will lose the ability to move water and nutrients up past the damage. Losing a patch of bark and the underlying cambium below a limb will starve that limb and kill it within a few years at most. A tree with a strip of missing bark that goes around the trunk has been “girdled” and will be dead in a year.

Keep or Replace

In the end, you're going to have to decide whether to keep the tree or not.

• If the tree is placed to provide shade, are the remaining branches going to do the job? 
• Is the tree a decoration in the yard (easy to replace) or does it serve a purpose (fruit production, wind break, etc,)?
• Does the tree have any sentimental value, like being planted to mark a birth or death? 

These questions may lead to giving a tree the benefit of the doubt and trying harder to save it. If it is in the wrong place, or is a variety that is ill-suited to your area, then removing it is an easier decision to make.

After you have removed any broken limbs and made sure nothing about the tree is unsafe, take a step back and wait a while. That tree isn't going to walk away, so you can always decide to take it out later. It may surprise you and start to grow new limbs to replace the missing ones in a year or two.

Don't rush your decision and watch out for the inevitable scam artists who descend on every disaster scene. Just because someone has a business card and a magnetic sign on his pick-up full of chainsaws doesn't mean he knows what he's doing. Arborists are like any other professional service provider and are licensed by most states, so check with your state licensing boards to make sure you're not dealing with a scammer. Local people will also have a better understanding of your climate and native species of trees, so give them the first chance at looking at your trees.

Trees After a Storm

While looking at pictures of the aftermath of this year's hurricanes (and the season's not over yet), I was struck by the number of trees toppled and torn by the 100+ mph winds. I was reminded of the trees we lost around here after the 2011 floods (although ours took a year or two to die from drowning - a tree's roots need air) and the damage I've seen tornadoes do to homesteads and wood-lots.

Most of us like having trees around. They provide shade in the summer, firewood for the winter, and we hate to see them destroyed by hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes. Trees are often symbols of permanence and strength, and it is disquieting to see them chewed up like a dog toy. Fruit and nut trees can provide food in small lots and income when planted in larger numbers. There are a lot of reasons to like trees.

So, what do you do after the storm has passed and you begin to survey the damage so you can make a plan for the future?

Safety First!

• Be on the lookout for trees and branches in contact with power lines. There is no easy way to tell if a power line is “live” or not, and wet wood makes a fair conductor of electricity. If you see trees in the power lines, call the experts.
• Unless you have experience felling trees, leave the standing or leaning trees to the experts. Broken branches stuck in a standing tree are often called “widow-makers” for good reason - they are unpredictable and dangerous to clear. Leaning trees will have unnatural stresses on the trunks and they may not react to cutting as you expect them to. Work from the top down if at all possible to avoid having a trunk release the pressure from a twisting or tilting stress in a way that is unexpected.
• Use your personal protective equipment (PPE). Safety glasses, gloves, hearing protection with power tools, and Kevlar chaps if you're running a chainsaw. Keep non-workers a safe distance away; you don't want to get hurt or injure a bystander and add to the load on emergency services. (We've covered this before in various posts about firewood.)

Clear the Paths

• Roads and walkways should have priority over yards; you're going to need the roads to get help in and out, and at the very least having a cleared path will make it easier to get rid of the debris. The only exception I can think of is if you have or expect looters and would prefer to make their travel more difficult. Some would consider clearing the roads for looters “hunting over bait” and therefore unsporting, but that's a personal decision.
• Clear the area around where you're going to be working. Less clutter means fewer things to trip over, which is always a good idea when you're dealing with cutting tools. Having helpers keep the area cleared as you cut a tree into manageable pieces will speed things up and is a good use of unskilled labor.

Know How to Dispose of the Debris

• In the aftermath of a major storm there is always a huge pile of debris to get rid of. Locally, we see this after every ice storm and tornado. Tree limbs and branches are often piled and burned at centralized locations in order to prevent hundreds of smaller, less well-watched fires from causing further damage. This also gives some control over the smoke produced by burning green wood, since it will be coming from a single source which is usually well away from where people are living.
• If there are no centralized services available (yard waste collection), you may have to set up a “burn pile” on your own property. Think of it as a huge campfire and build it with the smaller pieces on the bottom and the larger ones on top. This will allow the heat from the smaller pieces burning to rise past the large ones, giving them a chance to dry out enough to burn with less smoke.
• If you have a wood chipper, composting the debris is a good option. Even just putting a layer of wood chips down around the base of healthy trees is better than burning wood for the sole purpose of disposing of it. Wood chips will help hold in moisture and keep down weed growth, and they tend to make it easier to mow around trees as well.

I'm going to talk to an arborist friend soon and will try to get some professional advice on how to decide if a tree is too damaged to survive, so I'll cover that process in a separate post. They might grow into weird shapes, but trees are pretty resilient to damage from what I've seen.

Prudent Prepping: Last Minute Preps

The dust has settled and the First 72 Hours have passed. Follow along as I build a long term plan via Prudent Prepping.

The topic of Last Minute Prepping came up while talking to a friend who recently moved from Oregon to Tennessee and who is renting a house while waiting for the sale of his Oregon house to close. He can't do much in the way of structural or permanent changes to his rental, but he has done several temporary and very simple things to be ahead of the changeable weather where he is now. Over the past month, the weather in Tennessee has gone from 30's and rain to 90's and cloudy, with wind, thunder storms, and tornadoes thrown in randomly. My friend has improvised some low cost and easy things to be safe in the crazy weather.

Quick and Easy Preps Around the House
Since he is on the outskirts of town, when the power is out his doesn't get restored quickly. This means he has to be ready to cook, heat his place and have lights. The last time lines went down it took 4 days to get everything restored.

Heat

If you have a fireplace or a wood stove, make sure you have enough wood to keep going for at least a week. Since weather knocks out the power regularly where my friend lives, he has several cords of wood on hand. 

Light

A generator is not in my friends budget, so gas or Coleman lanterns are his primary backup light sources, along with flashlights for personal use. He does not like candles, having had a bad experience with a fire as a kid. 

Cooking 

An expensive gas grill was moved East and it has been given a workout this winter. If no grill or barbecue is available and you have a wood stove, cooking can be done on top if that. An extra propane tank or two is not a bad idea, either. 

Weatherproofing

The house doesn't have window shutters, but it does have an overhanging roof that should offer some protection from falling branches. To prepare for window breakage, several rolls of 10 mil plastic and duct tape are placed around the house. 

Waterproofing 

No, not like that! The town temporarily ran out of sand bags early in the winter, so my friend filled trash bags with dirt to keep water out of his garage. The bags aren't in very good shape now, but are filled with dirt which can be easily dumped/shoveled or broomed off the concrete and back to where it came from.

Personal Care
With power potentially out for a week, plans needed to be made for the care and feeding of the people in the house.

Food

Because my friend moved from a semi-rural area in Oregon to a similar place in Tennessee, a reasonable supply of emergency food is on hand. The freezer has water-filled gallon zip lock bags which can be used for ice or in a portable cooler if needed. Before the bags freeze, they flow and fill gaps between the items already in the freezer, meaning they take up less obvious space than one-gallon milk jugs. 

Water

I've spoken to him about a bath tub water bladder for water storage, but there isn't any interest. What has been done is just filling the tub. As a camper, he does have a water filter system as a backup; I'm not sure which one or how big it is though.

Backup Supplies 

Smaller amounts of everything, including clothing, is placed into my friend's small motor home in case the house takes any major storm damage. Personal information like prescriptions, documents and spare glasses are also in the motor home. Everything is in plastic bags or in totes, just in case the motor home takes a hit too.

The Takeaway

• Any place can be prepared for bad weather or emergencies in just a few hours.
• It's better to be prepared ahead of time to reduce the amount of stress on everyone around you. 
• Any of the listed steps can be done in less than a day if you know there is a storm coming, but reasonable people living in severe weather areas should already be prepared for the worst.

Nothing was purchased this week or removed from my gear.


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The Blizzard

Weather is part of life and around here it changes rapidly. About ten days ago, the witch-doctors ( AKA weather-people) started predicting a storm. We've seen this game before, and nobody pays them much attention until about 72 hours before their prediction is supposed to hit. As the storm got closer, it turned into a “blizzard” and they were predicting between one and three feet of snow, with 40 mph winds. By the time it actually hit we got about 6-8 inches of snow. They were right about the winds; we had sustained 30 mph winds with gusts over 40 mph, and it lasted for about 24 hours, so it met the definition of a blizzard.

What happens during a blizzard around here? 

Things have changed a bit since I was a kid, but in general:

• Schools close for days. Many businesses close as well.
• Roads get cleared, with business and wealthier areas getting priority.
• Stores get cleaned out of staples like bread, milk and eggs.
• Traffic slows to a crawl and many people just stay inside where it's warm.
• Darwin's law starts to rear its head. Idiots attempt to remove themselves from the gene pool.
• Hospitals fill up with heart attacks, sprained backs, and broken bones from shoveling snow and slips on the ice.

My preps for a blizzard are minimal. 
We see them often enough that they are not something extraordinary or bizarre, just a part of winter.

• The pantry is already stocked for far longer than any blizzard will last.
• I have no kids at home, so school closings have no effect on me any more beyond watching out for children in the streets.
• My generator is sized to be able to run my furnace, which is oil-fired. I keep the 500 gallon fuel oil tank (enough for at least two months of harsh winter) at least half full. Eventually I plan on getting a slightly larger generator that burns #2 diesel, which is identical to #1 fuel oil, and a secondary fuel tank.
• Warm clothes and blankets are already out of storage. I'm skinny and get cold easily, so I have more ways to stay warm than I'll probably ever need. It's a personal peeve of mine; I hate being cold and I live in an area that gets brutal winters some years.
• Water is not an issue. The town water supply is gravity-fed and will last a few days without pumps. I also have stored water and purification methods on hand.
• Back-up lighting, in case the power goes out, is on hand in a variety of forms. Candles, oil lamps, Coleman lanterns, flashlights, etc. are scattered around the house. I live in an older house with tall windows on the south side, so ambient light during the day is usually enough.
• I tend to “shelter in place” during nasty storms. Unless family is in danger, I don't travel when it is snowing and blowing hard enough to drop visibility to less than 100 yards.
• I have an all-wheel-drive vehicle just in case I need to get somewhere. It gets crappy mileage (<5 mpg) and is slow (max speed ~ 50 mph), but it will go just about anywhere.
• One of the things that influenced my decision to buy the house I'm in was the roof. I live where it snows, so I looked for a house with a steep pitch to the roof. It sheds snow and is less likely to fail due to overloading. Flat roofs collapsing are normal events in the news every winter, and I don't need that headache.
• I'm getting older, so I have to pay closer attention to how much I exert myself while moving snow. I've been walking and skating on ice since I was able to walk, but I still have to watch where my feet are going.

Since every storm is a bit different, I did learn a few things. 
These are what I need to improve:

• My wife is not a prepper. When the power goes out, she gets quite upset. Without her TV and internet, boredom sets in within minutes, and lack of light is just not allowed. I'm working on that, trying to find ways to keep her mind occupied. She has a few low-tech hobbies, so I've been encouraging those over staring at the boob-tube.
• I try to keep an eye out for my neighbors, mainly the widows, older folks, and single parents. The neighborhood has lost about a third of its families in the last couple of years and I need to get to know the few new neighbors. I have extra lights and warm clothes, and have shared in the past.
• I've come to the conclusion that it may be possible to be too well-prepared. This last storm hit and I got bored because I had my bases covered. Bored is better than scrambling, but forced inactivity gets to me.

Stay warm and safe this winter!

An Object Lesson!

After the Storm
5x7 Acrylic on Board

This past week, various of our contributors have been discussing the time change and using it to remember to check your BOB and GHB and other gear and make sure it's all up to date.

"Spring Forward" and all that, right? And spring has just made its typical flamboyant entry into Oklahoma's weather patterns.

Spring here means storms, and thunderstorms are common. You know what's common with Oklahoma thunderstorms? Baseball-sized hail and tornadoes! Yes, spinning winds in excess of 200 MPH, as Mother Nature starts PMSing to beat the band.

So there I was, in the middle of taking apart my Bug Out Bag to bring it up to date for the new season, and what do I hear? I hear tornado sirens going off from several directions. With my BOB in shambles, and gear spread all over the place, and both dogs going crazy because of the sirens.

It's amazing how rapidly you can throw a BOB back together again when the sirens go off and tell you to duck and cover!

Fortunately the tornado warning was called off fairly soon, and I didn't need my BOB. We've also been lucky enough to befriend our next door neighbors, who happen to have a storm cellar in their back yard. It's only 100 feet from our back door, and we are invited to take shelter in it should we see a funnel on the ground and headed our direction.

Of course, the rule of thumb with a tornado is that if you can see it on the ground, you probably don't have enough time left to seek shelter - which is why we pay attention to the sirens when they go off!

Its no joke, folks. Don't put off seasonal changes to your bag. Don't put off making sure batteries are in good shape, all your necessary medications and such are easy to grab or already in there, all your paperwork is backed up and secured inside. Don't wait until you're in the teeth of a storm to remember that you need to throw a few things together.

Because if you wait until you're most likely to need it - you probably won't have time to actually get it done.

Hurricane Preparedness: Riding it Out

Not actually Erin.
Picture by KJ Photography
& is used with permission. 

This is Part 3 of my "Hurricane Survival" series. Part 1 may be found here, and part 2 here. 

Today I talk about what you can do to maximize your chances while staying and riding out the storm -- which, let's be honest, is probably the best example of "bugging in" that exists without the corresponding SHTF that follows.

(I phrase it like that because if, post-hurricane, the feces really has hit the oscillator, you ought to have evacuated in the first place *coughKatrinacough*. Remember, the First Rule of surviving any crisis is "Don't be where the crisis is.")

Make Sure Your Home Is Not In a Flood Zone

Good news:  It's very easy to do this. Go to https://msc.fema.gov/portal, enter your street address, and see what zone you're in based on the map.  Ideally, you want to be in Zone X, which means you have 0.2% or less chance of annual flooding, and if it does flood there will be less than 1 foot of water. Now, please note that a hurricane is not a flood, but it will give you an excellent idea of whether or not your home is in danger of water damage (either from storm surge or from the tons of rain that is being dumped) based upon the drainage conditions. 

Bad news: If your home is in a flood zone, you're kinda screwed. If you're lucky, you'll have access to earth-moving equipment and enough dirt to make a levee....

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/05/mississippi-floodwaters-roll-south/100069/

... but even then, that's not a guarantee it will work. Fortunately for you, the above picture is from the Mississippi River flood of 2011 and not a hurricane.  Depending on where you live, you may only need a few feet of sandbags to protect your property, in which case I recommend the EZ Bagger -- it takes a slow, back-breaking 2-person job and turns it into a fast, 1-person operation.  I've used it before (to prevent excess rain from flooding our porch) and it WORKS. 

I can't speak for other states, or even for other counties, but where I live the local Dept. of Public Works provides mountains of sand and free bags during the wet season -- all you have to do is go over there and fill them yourself. To be safe, investigate what your county does for hurricane season before one starts to roll in. 

If you live in a flood zone that's deeper than can be handled by mere sandbags, you should not be bugging in. GET OUT. 

Prepare For Rain - Lots and Lots of Rain

No, I mean LOTS. Think "Noah and the Flood" amounts of rain. Think "I can no longer see where I'm driving because the water is hitting the windshield so hard that everything whites out and the wipers can't keep up" lots. (Another good reason not to drive during a storm.)

Even if you're not in a flood plain, you can easily expect feet of water to be dumped on you during the course of a storm, and so sandbags are again a good idea to keep the water from getting onto your porch or creeping up under your door. If you have low points on your property -- ideally, some kind of drainage ditch or canal nearby -- you can dig trenches leading toward them and away from your home, but be careful that you aren't instead making a highway for rising water right up to your door.  Remember that with enough rain, sewers can back up and canals can rise.

Water will also find a way in through your roof and windows if possible. 

• Inspect the caulk around windows and doors to see if the seal is still good. 
• If you have drains or sump pumps, make sure they're in good working order. 
• Read this article from DisasterSafety.Org titled "5 Ways to Protect Your Home From Water Damage During Hurricane Season" for more information.  (Heck, I'm going to be linking to this site a lot, so if you have the time, it's worth a read -- especially if you're handy with DIY.)

Protect Your Home Against Wind

There are two checklists here:  what to do before there's a storm (i.e. NOW) and what to do when it's bearing down on you.

Before a Storm

These are good things to do regardless of whether or not you intend to evacuate. The more of them you have done, the greater the likelihood that your home will survive the storm. You do want to come back, right?

• If you have a gravel driveway or decorative rocks in your yard, replace them so they don't become airborne hazards. 
• If you have trees in your yard or nearby, check to see if they are large enough to be a hazard to your home if they fall. It may be necessary to call an inspector to see if they need to be removed. If they do need to be removed or relocated, check city ordinances first; it may be illegal to cut down a tree without permission. 
• Inspect your roof  to see if it needs repair or replacing. If your roof goes, the rest of the house is probably a loss. 
• Ensure your roof soffits are anchored.
• Make sure your garage door is pressure-rated. If it's not, find a way to reinforce it. 
• Brace the gable end truss of your house. This is something that can be retrofitted to existing homes. 
• Buy metal shutters for your windows, or pre-cut plywood and number them so you know which sheets go where. 
• Read this PDF on wind mitigation in case I've missed anything. 

When a Storm is Approaching

1. Get all of the loose objects out of the yard and put them indoors if possible. Lawn furniture, backyard toys, and even cars can be picked up by the wind and slammed into your house. 
2. Cover your windows. Ideally this should be done with metal shutters, but if you have to use plywood then follow these guidelines. This will help protect your home against the things you can't secure, like rocks or your neighbor's crap. 
3. Windows that can't be shuttered (like decorative windowlets on doors) should be secured on both sides with the strongest duct tape possible. They might break, but hopefully the tape will keep them from falling apart. 
4. I've never progressed past this point, having never actually experienced a hurricane strike. If any of my readers have, please let me know if there is more here that I should add. 

Inspect Your Bug-In Gear and Provisions

If you are extremely lucky, you'll only lose power for a few days and then life will return to normal. If you aren't, there's no telling when power and water will come back, so have at least a week's worth of food and water per person (including pets!) if you intend to bug in. 

• Make sure you have enough water.  I recommend filling a WaterBOB before the storm hits as there is no telling how long it will take before water service resumes. 
• Have a means of filtering or boiling water. There will likely be contamination of the water supply by the storm surge. Pairing a water filter (like a Katadyn Base Camp) with a means to heat it (like the Kelly Kettle) would be ideal for this. 
• Have food you can open. Canned food does you no good if you have no can opener!
• Have food you can prepare. A barbecue grill or a camp stove (I've reviewed several) will serve you well in this regard. 
• If you have a dedicated freezer, here are two useful tricks:
• Take some gallon jugs (like for milk), fill them nearly to the top (to give the water room to expand), and freeze them. Not only will these large ice cubes help keep your food cold for longer, but they will also be a handy source of water once they melt. 
• Take frozen food and put it into heavy-duty trash bags.  That way if the food spoils, cleaning it up will be as simple as throwing the bag away. 
• If you plan to use a generator, get fresh gas for it well before the storm hits. The day before is NOT the time to be gassing up!
• Put fresh batteries into your flashlights and radios.  A radio that can pick up Weather Band as well as local AM/FM is ideal. 
• Charge your cellphones that are text-capable. If you still have cell service after a disaster, the circuits are going to be crazy busy, and texts are more likely to go through than phone calls. Text your loved ones to let them know you're all right; save the actual phone frequencies for 911 calls. 
• Keep a flashlight on your person at all times, or have flashlights or lanterns in every room (especially the bathrooms). 
• Make sure your family knows where in the house to shelter if the roof comes loose or wind and water start to get into the house. If you have a room set up as a tornado shelter, use that. A bathroom without an external window is idea. 
• Have your first-aid kit out and ready to use, but still protected from any wind or rain that might get in. Ideally, keep it in a centralized, safe location. 
• Know where your electrical cut-offs are. 

Remember That You WILL Forget Things

I'm certain that I have forgotten a critical piece of advice. There's just so much to remember when it comes to riding out mother nature's fury. That's why I've provided you with these checklists -- so that you can look at them instead of having to remember it all.

But still, odds are good you'll forget something. Don't kick yourself over it; what's important is keeping a clear head through the crisis. Adapt, improvise, and overcome, and then learn from your mistake so you won't make it again the next time.


Now, everyone be safe this hurricane season, and let me know if there's anything I need to add!

Hurricane Preparedness: Lots of Scary Facts

Not actually Erin.
Picture by KJ Photography
& is used with permission. 

Last week, I talked about the evacuation ("bugging out") side of hurricane preparedness.  I originally intended for this week's article to be full of advice on how to make sure your home is ready for a hurricane strike, but I got a bit sidetracked.

Folks, I am absolutely astounded at all the people who seem to think they can weather a storm and end up paying the price for it. Therefore, before I talk about the actualities of bugging in for a hurricane, I'm going to try to scare the crap out of you so that you take it as seriously as I do.

Make Sure Your Home Can Take It
If you're a Floridian like I am, you're golden in this regard: as of 2013, we have the highest safety rating (95%) for hurricane-rated buildings and their associated code enforcement. However, if you live in other states, you might just be in trouble:

http://goo.gl/dt2xQF

However, just because your home is hurricane-rated doesn't mean that it will survive a direct strike. While Florida homes may be built on the assumption that once every 50 years they will experience winds over a hundred miles per hour (115 mph in North Florida, 180 in the southernmost Keys), keep in mind that a Category 5 hurricane, according to the Saffir-Simpson scale,  is a storm with wind speeds "over 157 mph". Kindly note there is no upper limit there. Back in 2008, a wind speed of 211 mph was recorded as Hurricane Gustav passed over Cuba -- and that speed broke the instruments.  There might have been stronger winds; we simply can't know. 

Also, the duration of the winds is as important as intensity: a home might be able to withstand a 180 mph gust for a few seconds, but what about minutes? What about storms that last for hours?  To quote Robert Simpson (of the aforementioned Saffir-Simpson scale),

"...when you get up into winds in excess of 155 mph (249 km/h) you have enough damage if that extreme wind sustains itself for as much as six seconds on a building it's going to cause rupturing damages that are serious no matter how well it's engineered."

And Then There Are the Tornadoes

It's been proven that hurricanes spawn tornadoes. Fortunately, the tornadoes that spin off from hurricanes and tropical storms are usually weaker than their great plains counterparts (usually EF0 or 1, and rarely exceeding EF3). However, the key word there is "usually"; there are two recorded instances (Hurricane Carla, 1961, and Hurricane Hilda, 1964) which both spawned EF4 tornadoes.

http://goo.gl/2dv662

Did you know that EF4 can get as high as 200 miles per hour? And that there is, in fact, an entire category beyond that called EF5 which is basically meteorologists throwing up their hands and saying "We have no idea how high this will go"?  A force 5 tornado is basically a town-killer. I sure don't want to be dug in on the day that a Cat 5 hurricane decides to get freaky and start tossing out EF4 and 5 twisters. 

Don't Forget the Storm Surge

"Storm surge" is a fancy way of saying "hurricanes also flood areas."  Storm surges are actually responsible for the majority of deaths in hurricanes, either from drowning (six inches of fast-moving water can knock a man off his feet), debris (a foot or so of the same fast-moving water can knock buildings off their foundations, causing them to crumble), or good old exposure, aka hypothermia. While not as impressive as the flooding caused by tsunami, they're a close second in terms of death and destruction.

http://goo.gl/ELRpdd

Note here how even a Category 1 hurricane can produce a surge deep enough to drown children and many adults, and how a Cat 2 is over the heads of all human beings. Now think about what happens if all that water decides that you are in its way... well, you're going wherever it takes you, and if it decides to smash you into a building or dump some debris on you, then you really have no say in the matter. 

Fortunately, water behaves in rather predictable ways when it comes ashore, and there are definite precautions which can be taken to protect a house and its occupants from flooding.  Just don't try to wade across it if it's moving quickly, and don't try to drive across a flooded section of road!

Have I scared you yet? Good.

Folks, I am not kidding when I say "If they tell you to leave, then get the hell out of town." Nature is a mother.  Therefore, all posts after this will assume that you are attempting to ride out nothing more than a Category 3 hurricane.

Next week (as this article has already gotten quite long) I will talk about what you can do to make your home safer from wind and water. 

Hurricane Preparedness: Evacuation

Not actually Erin.
Picture by KJ Photography
& is used with permission. 

Florida is known for many things: sunshine, gunshine, beaches and hurricanes (not these Hurricanes -- they belong to New Orleans), among others. But while most everyone thinks "Florida" when they hear the word "hurricane", the truth is that it's not that simple. Every state along the Gulf of Mexico (hello, Katrina) and East Coast (hello, Sandy) is vulnerable.  With us well into Hurricane Season (from the beginning of June to the end of November -- yes, that's a full six months) and the appearance of the first named storm of the season (hello, Arthur), now is an excellent time to talk about hurricane preps.

Disclaimer: I have never lived through an actual hurricane strike on my home town. Therefore, I can only speak from from a perspective of decades of living under the shadow of such.  However, I have lived through countless Tropical Storms (pre-Category 1 hurricanes) and several near-misses,  and no one else on this blog lives in a hurricane state. 

Stay Aware
My #1 tool for weathering a severe storm is knowing what is going on. This is made significantly easier by the existence of the internet and storm tracking websites like this one -- back in the 1980s, when I first moved to Florida, we were given maps (free at supermarkets) and had to manually track the course of threatening storms by watching the news and updating our maps with a pencil. Everything else was handled with a Weather Alert radio tuned to the NOAA frequency to warn us of severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, etc (and, more often than not, scare us in the middle of the night with an emergency siren that announced a "special marine warning" -- bad weather at sea -- that didn't affect us at all).

These days, folks have it easy: smartphones and tablets give us immediate access to the internet and there are a variety of weather apps for both Apple and Android devices that will give alerts whenever threatening weather is close. Between that, television and the radio, there is no excuse for being caught unaware by potentially hazardous weather. Situational awareness applies here!

Keep Your Car Fueled Up
Not only is there going to be a run on gasoline as a storm approaches (along with the concomitant increase in price), in some states (like Florida) it is illegal to sell gasoline if a state of emergency is declared. As a friend of mine likes to say, "Take care of the top of your gas tank and the bottom will take care of you."

Have Multiple Evacuation Routes
This is especially important in Florida, as it is a peninsula and storms can come from the Atlantic (east), the Gulf (west) or the Caribbean (south). It's not enough to have an evacuation route -- make sure that you are evacuating in the right direction! Getting out of town does you no good if you end up driving right into the path of a coming storm.

Not only do you need routes to take you out of town in all key directions (I have yet to see a hurricane swing down from the north, but the day I don't have a plan for it is the day that the weather turns weird and does something unprecedented), but you need  multiple routes, especially if you live in or near a metropolitan area. Despite having two practice runs (Hurricane Georges in '88 and Hurricane Ivan in '94), New Orleans' 2005 evacuation was still plagued with congestion from the one million people who had evacuated. If you are fleeing a storm, know multiple ways to get out, even if it involves taking unpaved country roads. The very last thing you want is to be caught stuck on the interstate because of a multi-lane accident, or trapped on surface streets by gridlock, while a storm surge and hundred-plus mile an hour winds bear down on you.

Have Designated Meeting Places

Many evacuees will drive separate cars. Sometimes this is because one member of the family is at work when the evacuation order is given (but see below), and sometimes this is because the family is so large that all family members, pets and bug-out bags -- you DO have fully stocked bug-out bags for every member of your family, don't you? -- simply cannot fit in a single conveyance. While driving two cars certainly increases cargo capacity, it also increases the possibility that family members will get separated during the evacuation. What do you do when that happens?

Cell phones are great for staying in touch -- as long as you have coverage. Walkie-talkies are useful, but their range is limited to a few miles -- and on the road, it's easy to get that far apart within minutes. 

Instead, my  solution is to go low-tech:  make sure every car has a detailed atlas for every state you may travel through and designate meet-up spots in case you get separated. This may be as simple as "the first rest stop across the state line" or as complex as a street address. Write these meet-up locations (called "rally points" in military jargon) inside the cover of the atlas so they won't get lost. And yes, I said locations, plural -- on a long journey you need more than one. General rule of thumb for military convoys is a rally point every 20 miles or so, but you don't need to go that route; something simple like "every Chevron station at an interstate exit" or "every highway exit that ends in 5" will suffice for most purposes.

And yes, combining this advice with #3 means that you need rally points for every single route you may take. Being prepared takes effort.

Listen to the Professionals

I shouldn't have to say this, but when you are told to evacuate, get the hell out of town.  Ideally you shouldn't have to be told -- hurricanes are large and slow-moving things, and there's plenty of time to get out of their way. In fact, if you think an evacuation is going to be ordered, leave before the order is given: you'll be far less stressed, won't run into as much traffic, and necessities like food, gas and hotel accommodations will cost much less. 

On the other hand, if you intend to bug-in (most Floridians won't even get out of bed for a tropical storm, and Cat 1 hurricanes are met with cookouts and parties), then commit to bugging-in and riding out the storm. Don't think you can ride it out only to decide at the last minute that you can't, and try to leave when the storm is at its height -- or worse, be forced to leave because your home is falling apart. 

Making sure that your home is actually hurricane-proof is the topic for next week's article.