I grew up in Florida and by the time Irene hits any palce big it won’t be much of a danger. The biggest physical problem you’ll have is flooding. If you’re home is prone to that, you’re going to have issues. It’s unbelievable how much rain a hurricane can dump. In fact some tropical storms in Florida have been more destructive than more powerful hurricanes as they dumped more rain.
ATMs tend to run out of cash very quickly in situations like this, so you want to get some money.
During the midwest tornado outbreaks of 2011, people around my town got giddy when Jim Cantore came to town.
Ocean City is under a mandatory evacuation starting at midnight tonight. As mentioned before, you should call Monday or Tuesday to see what’s what.
Yup. Houston’s far enough from the Gulf that we don’t get storm surge & we haven’t had really strong winds. (Even on the coast, Ike’s winds were not so bad but the storm surge damaged Galveston severely & really screwed upThe Bolivar Peninsula.) Well, except for the little tornadoes that tend to accompany hurricanes…
But weaker tropical systems can “get stuck” & dump a ton of water on the city. Many parts of whichflood badly–although the water runs off fairly quickly. This year, the drought has been so bad we’ve been hoping for a little of that tropical rain.
Without knowing how much risk OP is in, my advice is to get supplies for a few days, even if it’s minimal: canned/non-perishable food, batteries, tap water (1 gallon per person per day) in empty 2-liter bottles/plastic milk jugs (perfectly safe and sufficient for the short term).
This may be inadequate if conditions become severe, but you’ll still be far better off than if you did nothing.
Deep fry the bananas and add a spicy Thai peanut sauce from the PB; some twizzlers can be cut for garnish, but the rest are for dessert. The Toblerone is something you nosh on as you read a book in bed tonight.
Ranch Dressing? Well I’d prefer you use caulk for window & door insulation but I guess its pretty close.
Here is the current radar by me.
Wait, we interrupt this post for the Latest Hurricane Update from the DoppelWeatherTeam:
[spoiler] **emmaliminal ** is Still not ** rachelellogram’s ** Hon. :eek:
That and the entire Today Show Cast will Not be wearing panties today to show their moral support…
[/spoiler]
Go West, young Dopers, go West.
Visit Chicago.
Now.
I stopped at the store on my way home from work yesterday to pick up supplies. I bought milk, Cap’n Crunch, and Chef Boyardee. When my husband saw what I brought home he made a face and said he wasn’t letting the pregnant person buy disaster supplies ever again. I pointed out that we have a whole loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, and plenty of peanut butter and jelly in the house (along with about 50 cans of various soups) so it isn’t like we will only be eating Cap’n Crunch but he was still unimpressed.
Hey now, I could be HER hon, she’s just not mine. 
This Just In:
Emmaliminal Could Possibly be Rachelellogram’s Hon. But the prior report was in error: Rachelellogram is as of this moment, not…repeat not…Emmaliminal’s Hon.
There is no word yet on Al Roker’s panty status.
There are rumors that Nancy Grace may have commented on how a woman could possibly not report her panties missing for more than 30 days. More on that as reports come in.
Meanwhile, CBS NEWS in NY has now published its essential “Hurricane Irene Weekend Fun Guide” as a nice break from the rest of the networks “Earthquakes and Hurricanes and Politicians! Oh My!” coverage.
And for those of you short on cash after panic-buying the shelves empty, we have the cost-saving approach from our reporter in the field, Adina Howard. “Adina, what will most people be doing when they lose power during this crisis?”
I just got a robo-call from BGE saying that they are readying all sorts of emergency crews to restore power in the case of power outages… but we should totally prepare for widespread power outages. I just hope I don’t end up losing all the food in my freezers.
My area is now under an official Tropical Storm Warning, so it looks like it’s definitely going to be a fun weekend. The NOAA maps now have her tracking even closer to the coast than before.
In all fairness, anyone who builds on Bolivar with any expectation of permanence is a total, blithering idiot. It’s what… 1 foot above sea level, with water on either side, and no seawall or much of anything to protect your house?
Same thing for the far west end of the Island… just as stupid, and maybe 1" higher above sea level.
What did all the damage in Galveston wasn’t the wind or rain, but rather the storm surge rather gently flooding the city from the bay side- there was a lot of saltwater damage, but very little in the way of pounding, Gulf-side storm surge damage like there was on Bolivar and the western end of the island.
Your boss? Who is your boss, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center? :dubious:
Irene is most certainly not a Cat. 4. It’s a strong Cat. 2.
Here’s where you can find reliable information. You might want to share this link with your boss before he or she scares the pants out of the rest of your coworkers and clients with ignorant misinformation.
Everything else in your post was accurate.
Tacking on a counter-example. I don’t recall which storm it was that headed for Middle Tennessee a few years back with heavy rains, big winds and lots of damage in its path in points further south, but I watched it constantly on the radar as it was making a beeline for our area. Miracle of miracles, it petered out at the county line! Just disappeared from sight.
Nashville seems to get that sort of thing often enough to be weird. A long-track tornado within the past couple years just jumped over Davidson County after tearing up most of the counties on either side of us.
Bottom line: weather forecasts on big storms are crap shoots, no matter how many experts are on the ground to cover them. It’s sort of a “wolf, wolf” scenario, as I see it. Watch it develop and it will fizzle; turn your back and it will blow your neighborhood away.
Ooh! Ooh! I know this one. No! Um, unless the National Hurricane Center uses amateurs. See?:
In other news, our IT department (in coastal NH) just announced that, just in case, ahead of time, we’re gonna shut down everything except ecommerce, which has battery backups if the power goes out. So we won’t hurt the economy by being all prepared. America is safe.
This belongs right up there in Rules To Live By. Alongside “Never play poker with a man called Doc,” and “Never order a drink with more than two ingredients in a bar with a sign reading Bikers Welcome”.
Back in 2004 when Fl got whomped with multiple hurricanes one summer, my daughter’s roomie went out to buy them some supplies. For whatever reason, she came back with 4 cans of creamed corn. To this day, I have no idea what she was thinking. College kids are so cute…
I have a question. My mom called in a panic because she heard Maryland is being evacuated, and after ten minutes of me reassuring her that it was only Ocean City because it’s on the coast, she launched into a “to do” list for me. Most of it I’ve already done, like buying nonperishable, easy to open and eat foods, getting stuff out of my yard so I don’t have lawn ornaments coming through windows, and having flashlights and candles handy. She’s telling me I need to fill bathtubs with water because the toilets won’t flush if the power goes out and I’ll need to refill them by the bucketful. Um, what? I don’t have an electric toilet, so I’m a little confused.
I bought a few jugs of drinking water just in case (mostly because everyone else was and I figured maybe they knew what they were doing), but should I be expecting a lack of clean drinking water because of the storm? Will the faucets be empty? Will the water supply teem with cholera? Why do I need to buy water and fill my tub?
I’m in Columbia MD, nowhere near the coast, and it’s classic suburbia all around me. All of my preparations have centered around the assumption that we will have no power for 3-4 days because of downed trees. I haven’t really considered, or prepared for being trapped in the house for a week, or having no access to water, or an evacuation order. My husband is convinced I’m overreacting already with my peanut butter and bananas, but maybe I’m underestimating the possible mess?
Also, is there any hope for my tomato plants? Someone told me to pick all the green tomatoes and let them ripen in a paper bag, but the greenies are so small! Should I pick them anyway, since they’re destined to be crushed and flung away in the storm? It sucks, because some of them look like they have a shot at becoming big, gorgeous tomatoes.
I’m a little confused about the bathtub/toilet thing too. Are electronic toilets really that widespread? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.
I can see if water treatment plants go down, then potable water might be in short supply. Last year a water main broke and we were told not to drink or brush our teeth with anything other than bottled water. Are people fearing something like that?
Yeah, planning for non-flushable toilets is probably hysteria. In some municipal water setups I can imagine (though I Am Not a Water Engineer) there’s some danger of flood waters overwhelming the ability to treat the water that goes to your faucet such that it’s unsafe for drinking, but I really doubt much of the actual piping itself is vulnerable to things a hurricane does.
My husband works in a park located at the low point in a town where storm runoff is shared with the sewers, and in storms at high tide, it backs up; the park lawns get extra fertilizer. But the town is in trouble with some federal agency for not having replaced this obsolete system and is finally getting it done. The park’s toilets always work fine, though you may have to wade a little to get to them at certain times.