Warm, clearing, humid and things to remember when you're the one in a hurricane's path

Good Morning Augusta

This morning we have partly cloudy skies and a high of 76ºF. Winds are from the WSW at 10 to 15 mph.

Tonight we’ll have clear skies and a low of 61 ºF. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.

The readings from my weather instruments are:

Humidity is 92%, the Dew Point is 57.0ºF and the outdoor temp is 59.6ºF.

The wind direction is  Southwest between 0.3 MPH and 1.1 MPH, with a heat index of 59ºF.

The Relative pressure is 29.60, the Absolute pressure is 29.40 and rising with a weather graphic indicating clouds.

The UV rating is 1 out of 16, Sunrise is 6:05 a.m. Sunset is 7:09 P.M. Moon rise is 6:29 p.m., Moon set is 4:07 a.m., and the moon phase is waxing gibbous being 97% illuminated.

The RAW METAR readings from Augusta’s airport are:

METAR KAUG 041053Z AUTO 25005KT 10SM BKN037 12/12 A2975 RMK AO2 SLP075 T01220117

 

Visibility is 10.0 Miles / 16.1 kilometers with Mostly Cloudy skies to 3,700 ft / 1,127 m.

We received 0.46 inches of rain here over the past 24 hours.

Space Weather for this morning is:

Today’s Solar flux is 120, the solar wind speed is 468 Kilometers per second and the chance of a solar storm is 1%.

I want to thank everyone who expressed appreciation for my post on donating to help Hurricane Harvey victims. When you donate, you may very well be paying it forward – you never know what Mother nature has in store for you.

Having personally experienced 3 hurricanes, and having spoken with other hurricane victims over the years, I’ll add some of my own advice on top of the advice you get from disaster relief and emergency management organizations.

I’ll start by telling you about storm ratings for residential houses, shelters and public buildings.  You’ll hear a lot about how structures are rated for this or that wind velocity etc.  Remember this for the rest of your life:  “Mother nature DOES NOT read engineering specifications.  She writes them.” So, how strong is the storm headed your way?

   Next, foremost, accept that you must take care of you and your loved ones. Examine the web sites that give you advice on how much supplies to gather before a hurricane hits.  IF you read some sites that tell you you’ll need at least 4 days of food and water, take that bit of advice with a grain of salt.  Under the “Take care of yourself first” criteria, I strongly advise you to lay in a supply of fresh water and food (that doesn’t require refrigeration) that will last, at a rock bottom minimum of 7 calendar days.  A 3 or 4 day level of supplies may be enough if you’re on the fringes of a really nasty storm, but you don’t know if you’ll be that lucky. I’ll add in one additional important criteria here, this supply advice is only good to you IF your neighborhood won’t be under 4 or 5 feet of water.  If you’re expecting power and other utilities loss only, then the one week minimum level will work for you.  IF you have a freezer with food in it, I advise you to make sure you have a BBQ grill, whether it’s gas or briquette type, and start cooking the food in that freezer first, before it begins to thaw out and goes bad on you.  Eat it, or lose it. IF you have neighbors, invite them over for the food, don’t waste it.  The non-refrigerator or dehydrated food will keep.

If you have a generator, gas is important.  Remember, Gasoline has more BTU’s than Diesel, natural gas or propane does. In practical terms, that means you get more out of gasoline than with other fuels.  Run it sparingly, you don’t know how long you’re going to need it.  Use up your spare 5 gallon gas cans before you tap into the gas tank of the car to run it.  You’ll need the gas in the car to go out for more gas at some point, so never use up the gas in a vehicle that may be your means of escape or source of supply replenishment.

A word to those of you with wind turbines and solar panels.  For God’s sake take them down before the storm hits. I’m sure the outfit that installed them told you the mountings could resist storm force winds or something along those lines.  The RMS Titanic was unsinkable too.  Put the solar panels bak up after the storm has passed so that you have some power to work with until the power grid comes back up.

I’ll also give you a piece of advice that is so often overlooked.  When you see power crews or other utility crews out working to restore services, remember to be extremely nice to them.  A kind word, grateful encouragement and a heart-felt “thank you” gets you a lot more good will than you can imagine.  Trust me, they hear it and they remember. 

Next, make sure you have handy-wipe types of cleaning things for your hands etc. Depending on your fresh water situation, you may very well be without a bath or shower for some time.  Trust me on this, after a day or so, you’d give almost anything to be able to take a shower. IF you have a generator, and you have a well instead of town water, you’re in better shape than folks who are dependent upon town water and sewage, but be mindful of the quality of your water supply. 

 Next, be realistic about an evacuation pak for you and your family (Yes, preload the car. DO NOT wait to the last minute to do this).  Again, make sure that the gas tank on the car is full. This should probably include some sort of small solar-powered charging unit so that you can recharge your phones.

Second make sure you have a minimum of 2 days food supply for inside the car with you.  Third, have a good first aid kit and prescription medications listing.  Make darn sure you have a list of any medications from at least one, preferably two credible sources – one of them should be from your doctor’s office.  If it’s on his or her office letterhead, it’s a lot less likely another doctor or pharmacy in a place where you’ve been evacuated to, will question the validity of them.  The second source is the pharmacy where you normally get your scripts filled.  Chances are that you get your scripts filled at one of the national drug store chains, so if you get your script list from them on documentation they use, going to one of their stores in another county or state makes it a lot more likely they’ll be able to get them refilled for you.  The foregoing is easier said than done.  Doctors offices and pharmacies will tell you that you don’t really need a list from them.  I whole-heartedly disagree with them on the topic. INSIST that they do it for you.  If anything goes wrong, it will go wrong during a natural disaster.  So “Get it in writing.” There is an old saying in the legal profession that is gospel:  “IF it isn’t written down, it never happened.”  Make sure “it happened.”

The foregoing may sound like overkill, but it isn’t.  Doctors offices and pharmacies (and their respective computer system’s customer data bases) get flooded out just like everyone else does, and drug stores will not hesitate to put their own interests (liability) first if they have any question about the validity of prescriptions that you want to have refilled.  I was caught in that situation when one of my scripts was almost gone and the drug store told me they wouldn’t prescribe my cardiac pills unless I first went to a local doctor to get a new script. Right. That was a realistic request. 

 And, just to make sure you can keep a federal relief official or your insurance company’s claim adjuster happy, make sure you do both of the following.  First, make darn sure you have your insurance policy information with you as well as any city documentation about your property value.  Second, get pictures taken of your house, yard, roof and trees taken along with video of the inside of every single room of your house.  IF you have to evacuate, do your best not to leave anything there with your SSN on it.  Yes, looters will be with us until the end of time so don’t make it too easy for them to loot anything other than soaking wet furniture. 

You may also want to consider having your mail forwarded to a location where someone you trust lives.  Parents, grandparents, adult siblings or in-laws.  The post office can get just as snarled up as any other service can, so do your best to avoid their storm related problems if you can.  IF you can’t do that, call your local Post Office before hand and ask them how you can get your mail after the storm if your mailbox is blown away or if the city won’t let you go home to see if you have anything to go home to.

All of the foregoing is not, by any means absolutely everything you need to know.  It all depends on where you live and how much applies to you and where you live.

My goal is to ofer you suggestions related to storm preparedness under worst case scenarios. Think ahead and use your head.

For those of you who have moved South from non-hurricane country into hurricane country, remember to plan for that worst case scenario.  Just because you’re inan area that’s new, and hasn’t had a storm like Harvey in the last decade or so, doesn’t mean that you’re safe.

How much validity does the NWS assertion that “It’s a 1,000 year flood” carry in a nation that didn’t begin to be settled until about 400 years ago? In the Southeast you needn’t look back that far.  If you’ve moved into hurricane country “recently” remember that folks were told pretty much the same thing before storms like Donna, Carol, Cleo, Agnes, Ike, Catrina, Harvey…  Get the picture?