Hurricane Prep Tip Thread

As I begin to stare down Flo hitting us this weekend here is a place to post your tips on preparing for a hurricane. We're about 100 miles inland just west of Raleigh NC. Looks like Flo is coming to town and going to dump a boatload of rain. We should be OK flood-wise, our house is 100 feet in elevation above and 1/4 miles away from the nearest creek. If she hits as a Tropical Storm by the time she makes it inland to Raleigh our trees should be OK, category 1 or above is anyone's guess.

Here's one:

Put some containers of water into your freezer well before the storm hits. Milk jugs work well for this. Once frozen they'll help it ride out a power outage. A full freezer will stay colder longer than a half-full one. Before the heavy weather hits, take your ice cube bin, especially if you have a through the door dispenser, and dump it into a cooler. Transfer the things you'll need on a regular basis (milk, half&half, soft drinks, beer, lunch meat, mayo, jelly, etc) into the cooler so you don't need to open the refrigerator often. Keeping it closed will help it stay colder longer. Getting the ice cubes out of the bin will save you having to clean up the mess as they start to melt. Turn off the ice maker by raising the wire sensor. You can stick the ice cubes into a ziplock bag and stick them back in the bin or into your refrigerator section to help keep it cold longer. You just want to make sure the melting ice is contained.

Foods like prepared dinners, frozen fruit and vegetables, pizzas and ice cream will thaw pretty quickly. Frozen meat will stay frozen longer if you don't open the freezer.

Get your propane tanks filled for your grill in case you need to have an impromptu cook-out with the thawed contents of your freezer.

Anyone else in the path?

Sparky, we will be keeping you and all in the storm path in our thoughts and prayers. Be sure to keep us updated as you're able.

Best luck Sparky. We have similar issues every fall getting ready for winter. Great idea to be prepared, a little work in advance makes a big difference.


Having a gas generator and fuel. Pre-think how and what you will have power to run. Have a radio and OTA TV setup, way to keep cell phones charged. Lanterns and fuel, flashlights spare batteries, candles first aid kit, have your needed med. The list goes on.


You need to eat, drink, stay warm and dry and then ride it out.


If you don’t need one of the things you prepare with they are all still worth it.

I fill all my 5 gal. buckets with water and leave them sitting in the tub so I'll have water to flush the toilet.
( I tried the filling the tub with water trick one time and found out the drain leaked)
All my gas cans are full, two chainsaws ready to go.
Tarps at the ready incase I or one of my customers has a roof leak issue.
I have a neat booster box that not only has jumper cables and an air compressor, but has a USB port and an inverter so I can charge my phone and laptop anyplace I go.
In an event like this I try to just clean out the Freezer the best I can, starting with the most expencive items first
Any empty plastic bottles are filled with water and put in the freezer instead of the trash.
I always try to have a plan B, if the generator will not start, or I run out of gas (which is likely if we lose power for 10 days) I have a propane lantern and cook stove with a case of gas bottles as well as a camping potty.
I stood out hurricane Isabel and regretted it, this time my plan is to head west and let it blow by and come back after to deal with whatever happens.
Stuff can be fixed or replaced.
In Isabel we lost over 30 trees, 2 cars and a truck, HVAC system, water pump, the roof.
Since then I'm much higher in elevation from the water, but still within sight of the Chesapeake Bay.

We're on city water so I'm not terribly concerned about flushing toilets, they have water towers and back-up power for the system. I do plan on filling up my Igloo with water for drinking in case there is some malfunction of the treatment system, which hasn't happened in other storms. We have some bottled water as well. Cars are full of gas, I did it on Sunday and there weren't any lines. Yesterday, stations were running out of gas and had lines 4 and 5 cars deep. I'm sure the tanker trucks are working overtime delivering gas to the stations today. Grocery stores ran out of bread, water, milk, but all got restocked overnight.

Going to sharpen my chainsaw chain today and I just got a fresh container of fuel mixed up for the chainsaw. Right now they are showing, depending on the model, 5-18" of rain for Raleigh.

Take photos of each room so if something happens, inventory proof will be easier.

Thanks for the tips.
Sending good vibes & crossing my fingers for those in the path of this hurricane. Hope you'll all be safe.

The current track has it going south of us. We're in for a wet weekend with non-catastrophic winds. Unless of course, she doesn't follow the models.

havasu said:

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You can always just charge it in the car, especially if the power ports (TTFKAACL*) are hot all the time. Unless your car battery is really weak charging a cell phone won't kill it.


*in honor of TAFKAP (Prince) The Thing Formally Known As A Cigarette Lighter

Get a sharpie and write your DL # and next if kin PH# on your arm so they can deal with you they find you. Or get the hell out of there.

At this point, they are not recommending we evacuate from the Raleigh area. The forecast for our area is a lot of rain and winds around 40mph. They are recommending that people in areas prone to flooding should evacuate. My house is 100' above the floodplain.

I have a friend near Raleigh area who teaches at one of the state colleges. She said it looked like the storm was diverting a bit away. I'm hoping it won't do too much damage.

zannej said:

I have a friend near Raleigh area who teaches at one of the state colleges. She said it looked like the storm was diverting a bit away. I'm hoping it won't do too much damage.

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At this point it looks like a fairly major rain event for us with a lot of wind, but not catastrophic winds. We've usually weathered storms well in our neighborhood, I expect the remaining 20-year-old Bradford Pears to come down in the neighborhood this weekend. Power-wise our utilities are all underground so as long as the feeder lines that are above ground aren't damaged we should have power throughout the weekend. When we had a major ice storm in 2002 we had a short power hit but a lot of the area was without power for days and in some cases a week or longer.

We survived Florence just fine. So far we got about 8" of water and no trees down in the neighborhood. Spent most of Saturday working on a project at church and went out to dinner Saturday night. The restaurant was as crowded as a typical Saturday night. South and East of us took it on the chin. Around here low lying areas that typically flood, flooded. A lot of small debris on the road, leaves and small branches. I haven't been down to Lake Crabtree to see how high the water is from the 8" of rain. It is a flood control lake and can be up fairly high with half that much rain. We didn't have any real sustained downpours for hours on end. The rain came in bands as you'd see on the radar tracks of the storm.

I got a text message yesterday afternoon from the power company helpfully informing me that my power would be restored today by 11:45 PM. We had power the whole time, never even a flicker. I suspect their system had a glitch. I've heard of several isolated power failures in town but nothing widespread this far inland.

Good to hear Sparky!