With Florence about to demolish part of our east coast I thought I'd list some things that I do to prepare for a hurricane.  Here in New Jersey we rarely bear the full brunt of a major hurricane but we often get the leftovers and sometimes we get direct hits. Here are some simple things that you can do so you don't get caught with your pants down.
1.  The biggest mistake one can make is to procrastinate.  Do your supply gathering at least four or five days before the hurricane hits.  The closer you get to the hurricane's arrival the more jammed, insane, and empty the stores and gas stations become.  The same with bugging out.  Don't wait until the last minute.  If you leave a day or two before everyone else you'll avoid the worst traffic, gas shortages, and price gouging associated with an evacuation.
2.  Clean up your yard.  Anything can become a missile in a 120mph wind.  Take down your bird feeders, ornaments, and such.  Secure your trash cans so they don't end up in the next county.  Tie your boats down.  Anything loose might be blown to kingdom come.
3.  This is an important one that I learned after our tornado three years ago.  Have cash on hand.  Debit and credit cards are useless if the power is out.  Digital cash registers and ATMs don't work.  What ever cash you can muster even if it's just a hundred or two, have on hand.
4.  Some important items to have: extra batteries, bottled water, candles, non perishable foods, extra flashlights, plenty of lighters.... this list could probably go on forever.
5.  Even though there will be water everywhere during and after a hurricane clean water will be rare.  Sewers overflow and water systems become filthy and unusable.   Fill your bathtub up with water.  You can use this for washing and flushing. 
6.  If it looks like you're going to take some high winds and you don't have the time or materials to plywood over your windows just taping them up with duct tape will strengthen them and might prevent them from blowing in.
7.  Move your car or cars away from tall  old trees. They won't be completely safe no matter where you put them but you can at least get them out of the most danger.
8. Pray. At the very least it can't hurt. Florence is a beast.

The cash thing is a good thing to consider just generally. Recently I killed my card because I thought it was lost (found it in one of my bags about half a minute after I got off the phone with the bank...) and then before my card arrived, my girlfriend's card got nixed because of the British Airways hacking/data leak thing. Her parents, who would probably be able to lend us some money that we could then pay back, were out of the country so we were left with the money in our wallets and that was it. Both our bus cards were running out at the same time and we still had to buy food. By sheer chance and luck, I had lent some euros to my dad earlier this year when he came over to visit which he payed me back in cash which meant I had about 200€ in a draw which just saved us and got us through to today where I now finally have a card again. I'm thinking I should keep more physical cash around because even if the electricity is running that doesn't necessarily mean you can get at your money easily.

   Good tip, slingbadger.
    As it looks now North Carolina will get the worst of the winds.  Once she hits the coast Florence will be a slow mover and will dump profound amounts of rain where ever she goes... up to 40".  There is a chance that she'll stall off of the coast of NC.  That would be the worst case for the rest of the east coast including Jersey.  At that point all bets are off and Florence can hit anywhere or become a coast hugger and cause biblical damage. So far it's not looking too bad for Jersey. We'll see.  I just got back from walking Pandora and already we're getting a little light drizzle.

perpetualstudent wrote on Sep 14^th, 2018 at 4:40pm:


I've noticed News channels love hurricanes. It's great for ratings. Like money in their pockets. Not that they shouldn't hype big storms but there is definitely incentive to hype as much as possible.

Update:  New Jersey didn't even get its feathers ruffled by Florence.  We were very lucky.   We're supposed to get what ever is left over from her starting on Tuesday.