Hurricane Season: Do It Now, Because You Cannot Do It Later

Peak hurricane season runs from the middle of August through October. That’s now.

It hits the news. Everybody watches the same forecast at the same time, and then everybody drives to the same store. The water aisle empties in a day. Gas stations run forty-minute lines and then run dry. Batteries disappear.

Prices creep. Some of it never comes back until after the storm has passed and the trucks can move again.

None of that is a supply chain failure. It’s a hundred thousand people doing a week of shopping in six hours.

You can skip all of it by buying the same items today, when they’re in stock and nobody is fighting you for them.

I don’t understand the yearly panic, and after this many storms I’ve stopped trying.

The same forecast shows up every season, the same people act surprised, and the ones who get hurt are the elderly neighbor who can’t stand in a line for an hour and the single parent who reaches the store after work and finds bare shelves. Buying in July takes nothing from anybody. Waiting until the cone appears takes plenty from the people least able to fight for it.

Should you evacuate or shelter in place during a hurricane?

Make this call now, sitting in a comfortable chair. Not at midnight with the wind coming up.

Look up your evacuation zone. Every coastal county publishes them and it takes two minutes. If your zone gets an order, go. That’s not a suggestion, and emergency services may not come get you if you ignore it. Mobile and manufactured homes leave regardless of zone.

People who ignore an evacuation order are selfish. When they call for help at the height of the storm, a rescue crew has to go out into the water and the wind to get them, all for a choice made on a couch two days earlier. Leaving costs you a hotel bill and a dull day in traffic. Staying where you were told not to puts somebody else’s life on the line along with yours.

While you’re at it, pull up the surge map. Storm surge kills more hurricane victims than wind does, and the National Hurricane Center maps go down to individual neighborhoods and show which zones flood at which storm strength. Wind is what everybody watches on television. Water is what gets people.

Outside a zone, it’s your call. Weigh the honest stuff. How old is the roof. How many trees are close to the house. Is anyone in the household on oxygen, insulin, or a machine that needs power. Can you handle five days with no air conditioning in September.

Whatever you pick, decide the trigger in advance. Mine is written down: this condition and I’m gone. Deciding under pressure is how people end up on a highway at the wrong hour. During Milton I watched neighbors do both. The ones in flood-prone spots who left early had an easy drive and a hotel room. The ones who waited got dangerous roads and no vacancy. A few who stayed where they shouldn’t have came out by boat. The two paths need different supplies. That’s why the decision comes first. Leaving means documents, cash, medication, the pet carrier, a full tank, and an early start. Staying means two weeks of everything.

How much water do you need for a hurricane?

A gallon per person per day, minimum, and two is better once you count cooking and washing.

My system runs year round. I keep four five-gallon jugs from a delivery service and four cases of bottled water, twenty-four to a case. New jugs go to the back, drinking water comes off the front, so nothing sits long enough to go stale. When a storm gets named I take the cases from four to six. That’s the entire surge, and it takes one trip.

Buy the jugs on subscription and you were spending that money anyway. The rotation costs nothing and you never own water that’s been sitting in a garage since 2019. The jugs travel, too. I put two in the car during Milton in case we had to move. Fill the bathtub before the wind arrives. That water is for flushing, not drinking, and you’ll want it more than you expect.

Two things about storing water that people get wrong.

The expiration date on a bottle confuses everybody, because water doesn’t spoil.

The date is about the container and the conditions. Plastic breaks down over time and starts giving the water a taste. Plastic is also permeable to vapor, so a case stored near gasoline, paint thinner, pesticide, or cleaning chemicals will pick up what’s in the air around it. And if a seal fails, bacteria and algae get in. The FDA doesn’t require a date on water at all. Rotate every six to twelve months and the question never comes up.

The second one I learned in my CERT-LA training: never store water directly on concrete.

A concrete floor swings in temperature and gives off moisture for years, and a garage or basement slab has usually absorbed gasoline, oil, and solvent over its life. Plastic sitting on it picks all of that up, and the temperature cycling works micro-cracks into the container. Put a board, a pallet, or a couple of two-by-fours underneath and the problem disappears.

How much food should you stock for a hurricane?

Three days is the floor. Two weeks is the target if you have anywhere to put it. Buy things you already eat, so the stock rotates through the kitchen instead of aging in a closet. Canned and boxed, with the dates rotated front to back.

My picks lean toward protein that needs no cooking. The foil pouches of tuna that hikers carry. Canned beans, salt free, high protein, edible straight from the can if it comes to that. If carbs aren’t a problem for you, the beans in brown sugar syrup are more calories per can and taste better cold. That counts for more than people think on day four.

A manual can opener. Write it down. Everybody stocks cans and owns an electric opener.

Eat from the refrigerator first, then the freezer as it thaws, then the shelf. Refrigerated food is safe about four hours with the door shut. A full freezer holds 48 hours, a half-full one about 24. Anything above 40 degrees for more than two hours goes in the trash. The smell test doesn’t work, because the bacteria that hurt you don’t announce themselves.

The move that saves the contents of your refrigerator is ice. Before the storm, buy bags of it and pack out the freezer. A full freezer holds cold far longer than an empty one, so the ice keeps everything around it frozen while it waits to stock the coolers.

When the power drops, move the ice into coolers and transfer the cheese, the milk, and the eggs into them. Keep a thermometer in the cooler and hold it under 40. That buys days instead of hours, and it means you open the coolers all week and leave the refrigerator shut.

Eggs belong in the cooler, and people get that wrong. The packing plant washes American eggs, and washing removes the cuticle that seals the shell.

That’s why they live in a refrigerated case here and sit on a shelf in Europe. Once an egg has been chilled it has to stay chilled, because a cold egg warming up sweats, and that moisture carries bacteria through the shell. USDA gives you two hours at room temperature, one hour above 90 degrees, and then they go.

Cook outside on propane. Never a grill or a camp stove indoors.

When Milton took the power out, I walked over to my neighbor’s house with our camping stoves and we cooked potatoes, beef, and cheese together. The food was going to spoil anyway. Best meal of the week.

What lighting do you need during a power outage?

This is the one I got wrong for years.

I stock water, food, and medication like a professional and I kept forgetting light. Then you spend a night walking into your own furniture.

What fixed it: the little rechargeable lights that plug into a wall socket and switch on automatically when the power drops.

I have one in every outlet in the house. Sixteen of them. That sounds excessive until the grid goes and the whole place has a low glow you can move around by without hunting for a flashlight.

Check them once a year. The battery ones need fresh batteries. The rechargeables need to be confirmed still working, because a dead rechargeable looks exactly like a live one. Flashlights and headlamps on top of that, because you’ll need to look inside a dark cabinet at some point. Headlamps beat flashlights when both your hands are busy.

What kind of generator is best for hurricane season?

Propane, not gasoline. Gasoline goes bad, and storing it in cans around your house is an explosion risk I want no part of. Propane tanks sit for years without degrading, there’s nothing to spill, and refilling one is a normal errand.

The rules are absolute. Outside only. At least twenty feet from windows and doors. Never in a garage, and the open door doesn’t make it safe. Carbon monoxide kills people every single hurricane season, and it does it after the storm has passed, when everyone thinks the dangerous part is over. You won’t smell it and you won’t feel it coming.

Those deaths are senseless, because every one of them was preventable. The warning is printed on the machine, repeated on the news and posted at the hardware store, and people still run a generator in the garage with the door cracked because it’s raining or they’re afraid it’ll get stolen. If theft worries you, chain it to something outside and keep it out of the house.

Know your runtime before you need it. A twenty-pound tank doesn’t last as long as most people assume, and running out at 2 a.m. is a bad time to learn that. A generator also announces to the neighborhood that you have power when nobody else does. Think that through before a long outage. Below the generator tier: battery banks and a solar panel to top them up. Charge everything before landfall, including a car charger for the phones.

How do you get prescription medication before a hurricane?

A month if you can get it, and a plan for the person in the house whose life depends on a machine. A friend of mine had lung disease and an oxygen concentrator with a two-hour battery. During one long outage he thought that battery would run out before the power came back. That’s a different category of problem from a warm refrigerator, and it needs a real answer before the season starts. Insulin needs cooling and tolerates room temperature for a while. Cooling cases and small battery-powered refrigerators buy you time. Psychiatric medications can’t be stopped suddenly, so those need a real buffer.

Now the part almost nobody knows. Once a governor declares an emergency, the pharmacy rules change considerably.

Florida has the clearest law in the country and I learned it in detail after Milton.

Statute 252.358 forces every insurer and managed care organization to waive the time restrictions on early refills for the length of the emergency, so the refill-too-soon block simply switches off. Statute 465.0275 goes further: if a pharmacist can’t reach your prescriber, they can dispense up to a 30-day supply of any maintenance medication for a chronic condition with no new prescription. Blood pressure, diabetes, thyroid, most of what people take daily.

Controlled substances get different treatment depending on the schedule. Under Florida emergency orders, Schedule III, IV, and V can be refilled early, which covers a lot of anxiety, sleep, and pain prescriptions. Schedule II stays under the normal rules, so stimulants and opioids get no relief at all.

At the federal level, the Emergency Prescription Assistance Program can switch on after a presidential disaster declaration and covers medications, equipment, and supplies at no cost for uninsured people in the disaster area. Learn how it works before you need it. The practical version: the moment an emergency is declared, get to a pharmacy and fill whatever you can. These provisions exist so people can top off while they still have medication left, not to rescue someone who already ran out. And the pharmacy will have a line, same as everywhere else.

Do you need a go bag if you live in a hurricane zone?

Hurricanes are the polite disaster. You get days of warning. Almost nothing else does that.

A woman I know got about two minutes during the San Diego fires. She grabbed her purse and her cat and drove. Everything else stayed. She made it out because the cat carrier was already by the door, because she lived in fire country and kept it there, and because her car started and had gas in it.

Two-minute evacuations don’t run on decisions. There’s no time to decide anything. They run on habit and on whatever is already packed.

So build the bag now and put it where you’d trip over it. Documents, medication, cash, a change of clothes, water, a charger, and the pet carrier beside it. Then keep the car above half a tank for the whole season, because a full tank turns a plan into an exit.

Even in a hurricane, where you get real warning, the bag lets you leave at noon instead of arguing about it until dark.

What should be in a hurricane first aid kit?

Not the store-bought one. Those kits advertise five hundred pieces and four hundred of them are single aspirin packets, because packet count is how the price gets justified. You can buy a bottle of aspirin anywhere. What you can’t improvise is trauma gear.

I think selling those boxes as disaster kits comes close to fraud. Somebody buys one, puts it in the closet and believes the household is covered, and the first time a chainsaw kicks back they find out they own a pile of aspirin packets and a stack of cartoon bandages. The companies know what the kit is supposed to be for and pad it anyway, because the number on the box is what sells.

Build your own around what your household needs. Real bandages in useful sizes, gauze, medical tape, antiseptic, wound closure strips, scissors, tweezers, gloves. Add bleeding control if you’re willing to learn it, meaning a tourniquet and hemostatic gauze, because the injuries after a storm come from chainsaws and debris and roofs.

Supplies without training are decoration. Take a Stop the Bleed class. Take CPR. Both are cheap and both are a couple of hours.

What do people forget to buy before a hurricane?

Cash. No power means no card readers and no ATMs. Small bills, because nobody has change. Before Milton in October 2024 the bank ran out of cash, and I came away with $200 in fives, the advice from my own survival book. After a disaster the price of everything becomes whatever the ATM gives you, so if all you can get is twenties, everything costs $20.

Fuel. Fill the car at the start of the season and keep it above half all the way through. When the cone shows up, the stations have lines and then they have nothing.

Documents. Insurance policy, deed, IDs, medication list, in a waterproof bag with copies in the cloud. Then walk the house with your phone and video every room and every closet. That video is your insurance claim. Do it before, because after is too late. Before Milton, I photographed everything for insurance and put the pictures on OneDrive. I also moved my expensive books into closets in case the wind breached the windows, partly to keep busy so I didn’t freak out.

Your deductible. Hurricane deductibles are a percentage of the insured value, not a flat number, and people discover that at the worst possible moment. Flood is a separate policy and the federal program has a thirty-day waiting period, so buying it when the storm is named accomplishes nothing.

Communication. Text instead of calling, because texts get through congested networks when voice won’t. Pick one out-of-state person everybody checks in with, so nobody is trying to reach six people at once. Buy a NOAA weather radio, because your phone will die and the radio runs on batteries.

Sanitation. Trash bags, wipes, hand sanitizer, and the bathtub for flushing.

Pets. Food, medication, carrier, and vaccination records, because shelters ask for proof.

Your neighbors. Know who lives around you, know who’s elderly or alone, and know how to reach your building manager. During Milton the useful things came from the people fifty feet away. None of them came from any agency.

Why is the aftermath of a hurricane more dangerous than the storm?

Because everyone relaxes.

The wind stops and people go outside into streets full of downed power lines, standing water, and unstable trees. They run generators in garages. They pick up chainsaws they’ve never used. They work in September heat with no air conditioning and no water. Contractors show up asking for cash up front.

The storm gets the headlines and the aftermath gets the injuries.

The cash-up-front contractors are the part of hurricane season I hate most. They go looking for the people who are exhausted, scared and desperate to get a tarp on the roof, which usually means the elderly, and too often they’re gone with the deposit before they do any work. Check the license with the state, get the terms in writing, and pay as they finish the work.

Heat is the one people from cooler states underestimate. After Milton I went five days without power in weather that hit the mid-eighties indoors by mid-morning. That’s not uncomfortable. For an elderly neighbor or anyone with a heart condition, that’s dangerous, and it lasts as long as the outage does. Then the standing water. Mosquitoes breed in it within days and mosquito-borne illness is a real post-hurricane risk, so DEET and long sleeves belong in the kit. Snakes get displaced by flooding and end up where they don’t normally go. Wear boots. One more Florida-specific habit: waterproof everything. The humidity alone degrades electronics, medications, and food faster than any other place I’ve lived. Dry bags inside the pack, small waterproof cases for medication and electronics. Routine maintenance.

The response is often better than you expect. When Milton passed, my power was back in twelve hours and the internet in twenty-four. Crews were everywhere, fixing lines, clearing roads, standing up cell towers, working around the clock. Florida is good at this now. Know who handles what where you live, because the local and state teams are usually faster than anyone flying in.

Plan for the water to go out, too. A man who rode out Hurricane Michael, the Category 5 that hit the Florida Panhandle in 2018, said his neighborhood lost both power and water for about ten days, and losing the water was worse. He forgot to fill the bathtub before the storm. Fill yours, so you can flush. Find your sewer cleanout now, the capped PVC pipe outside the house, so you can find it fast if sewage starts backing up. And when the power’s out, go easy on the drains. Sewer lift stations run on electricity, and every load of laundry you send down the pipe adds to the backup when they stop.

He also did something smart with what little power he had. He turned one room into the family’s base, ran a small window air conditioner there off the generator, and kept everyone in it. Cooling one room is something a modest generator can do. Cooling a whole house isn’t.

And he’s organizing what I wish every neighborhood had: a volunteer list. A few people per street who have chainsaws, ladders, tarps or just two good hands, ready to check on neighbors and clear small debris once officials say it’s safe. Churches and community groups near him had food and water out within a day or two after Michael. Neighbors helping neighbors fills the gap before the official help arrives.

How do you prepare your home and car for hurricane flooding?

Water does more damage than wind, and it reaches places that have never flooded before.

A house can ride out hurricane-force wind and still be unlivable afterward because of what came in at ground level. Storm surge pushes seawater up bays, canals and the Intracoastal, and a high tide stacks it higher. Inland, ten inches of rain fills rivers, lakes, canals and retention ponds faster than they can drain. Plan for the water as seriously as you plan for the wind.

Start outside. Bring in or tie down patio furniture, grills, umbrellas, planters and decorations, because anything loose becomes a missile. Clear the gutters and the storm drains near your property so rain has somewhere to go. If you have a pool, put away the loose equipment around it. If you have a boat, follow your marina’s hurricane plan, and do it before the wind picks up.

Then work from the floor up. Get electronics, tools, valuables and anything irreplaceable off the floor of the garage and the ground level of the house. Documents, medication and keepsakes go upstairs or onto the highest shelf you have. If your home has a sump pump, test it now. Sandbags and flood barriers help with shallow water. They don’t stop serious flooding, and they’re never a reason to skip an evacuation.

Turn the refrigerator and freezer to their coldest settings before the power goes, and keep the doors shut once it does.

Know where your main breaker is. If emergency officials or your utility tell you to shut off the power before water reaches the house, shut it off. Never touch anything electrical while you’re standing in water. A portable generator stays outside, and it never connects to household wiring unless an electrician has installed a proper transfer switch. Plugging a generator into the house without one sends power back down the line, where it can kill the lineman working to restore yours.

The car needs a plan too. Fill the tank early. Move the car to high ground outside the expected flood area, and keep it away from trees and anything else that could fall on it. A garage won’t protect a car from rising water. If you’re in a surge zone, move it before the evacuation traffic starts, and don’t plan to ride out the storm inside it.

Inland flooding has a cruel twist. The worst of it comes after the storm. Rain that fell upstream keeps flowing into rivers, canals and lakes for hours or days, and the water keeps rising under blue skies. A road you drove in the morning is underwater by afternoon. So keep watching flood warnings and local emergency management long after the wind is gone, and know a second way out if your usual route crosses low ground.

And when you meet water on the road, turn around. Never drive around a barricade, and never drive or walk into moving water. It’s deeper and faster than it looks, and a foot of moving water will float a car.

How much does hurricane preparation cost?

Less than people assume, and spread across a normal grocery run. The water is on subscription you already pay. The food is food you already eat, bought earlier. The socket lights are a few dollars each. The radio is one purchase, forever. The propane tanks last for years. The cash is money you already have, in a different place. What it buys you is the thing you can’t buy in the cone. When the storm is named, you look at the news, look at your closet, and go do something else while everybody else sits in a gas line.

I’ve been through Irma, Helene, and Milton on this coast, and before that a wildfire in California that surrounded my car on all four sides while I drove down a mountain. I got out of that one because a fireman got in my passenger seat and called for a helicopter to drop water directly on us. I was completely unprepared, and the only reason I’m here is that somebody else was.

I was lucky that day, and I don’t intend to rely on luck again. Every hour spent getting ready in August is an hour a lineman, a firefighter or a neighbor doesn’t have to spend getting someone out in October, and I think we owe those people that much.

From the author

Real World Survival

Everything above, at full length, plus the twenty years I spent running disaster recovery for a major national retailer. Preparing without turning into a prepper.

Read the Book →

From the author

The Ultimate Bug Out Bag Guide

What goes in the bag, item by item and why, including what to wear, what to carry on your person, and how to build the whole kit on a budget.

Read the Book →

Shorter pieces on the same subject: the Prepared, Not Paranoid hub, Facing Hurricane Irma, and Hurricane Milton Was Truly Frightening.

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