The Hurricane Checklist You Should Start in May

The Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30. The climatological peak, according to NOAA, lands around September 10. So the useful window for getting your house in order is May, when the plywood is in stock, the generator shop isn't backed up three weeks, and nobody is fighting you over the last case of water at the grocery store.

Do it now and the rest of the season is maintenance. Do it the day a cone of uncertainty crosses your county and you're just another guy in a parking lot with a bad attitude.

Buy flood insurance before you need to think about it

This one is time-sensitive in a way nothing else on the list is. National Flood Insurance Program policies generally carry a 30-day waiting period before coverage kicks in. Buy on August 28 with a storm spinning in the Gulf and you have bought yourself a piece of paper that does nothing this season.

Standard homeowners policies typically exclude flood damage. Storm surge is flood. The National Hurricane Center has said for years that surge is the deadliest hazard in a landfalling hurricane, and it's also the one that quietly wrecks your finances if you assumed your policy had you covered.

Call your agent in the spring. Ask two questions: what's excluded, and what's the deductible on a named storm? That second number surprises people. Ask a licensed agent about your specific policy, not a guy on a forum.

While you're at it, walk every room with your phone and shoot video. Open closets. Open the garage. Narrate what things are. Then email it to yourself so it lives somewhere other than the device that's going in the truck with you. Adjusters work from evidence, and memory isn't evidence.

Know your evacuation zone by name

Your county emergency management office publishes evacuation zones, and they're not the same thing as flood zones. Look yours up, write the letter down, and stick it on the fridge. When the announcement comes, it will say "Zone A and B," not "everybody who lives near the water."

Then decide, in May, what you'll do when it's called. Where you go. Which vehicle. What route if the interstate is a parking lot. Who you call to say you arrived.

Evacuation orders are about surge and flooding, not wind. That's why the boundaries look strange on a map. Two miles inland can be fine while your cousin three streets over has to go. If they call your zone, you go. The house is insured. You're not.

What's actually in the kit

Ready.gov's guidance is a three-day supply of water per person if you're evacuating, two weeks if you're sheltering at home, at one gallon per person per day. Run the math for your family before you shop. A household of four looking at two weeks is 56 gallons, and that's a pallet, not a cart.

The rest, in plain terms:

• Food that needs no cooking. Peanut butter, tuna pouches, crackers, canned fruit, shelf-stable milk. A manual can opener. Yes, an actual one.
• Prescriptions. Ask your pharmacist in the spring about early refills ahead of a storm. Many states allow it under an emergency declaration, but you want to know the rule before the pharmacy is closed.
• Cash in small bills. Card readers need power and a network. So do ATMs.
• Flashlights and headlamps, plus the batteries they take. Not candles. House fires after storms are a real problem and open flame in a dark house with kids in it's a bad trade.
• A NOAA Weather Radio with SAME alerts. Cell towers fail. Make sure Wireless Emergency Alerts are turned on in your phone settings too.
• Paper copies of insurance policy numbers, deeds, prescriptions, and a printed list of phone numbers. Your contacts are in a phone with a dying battery.
• Pet food, a carrier, and vaccination records. Shelters ask.

Forget-me-nots, learned the hard way: a spare phone charging cable for the car, baby formula and diapers in the right size, a cooler you can actually lift when it's full, and shoes with hard soles staged by the bed. After a storm, the floor is glass and nails.

Watch means 48 hours. Warning means 36.

The National Hurricane Center issues a hurricane watch when hurricane conditions are possible within 48 hours, and a warning when they're expected within 36. Both timers refer to the arrival of tropical-storm-force winds, not the eye. That's the part people get wrong. You lose your working hours well before the storm shows up on your street.

So when the watch drops, that's your signal to finish everything outdoors. Fill both vehicles with gas. Fill the propane tanks. Charge every power bank and the tool batteries. Set the fridge and freezer to their coldest settings and freeze jugs of water to stack in both.

When the warning drops, you're indoors doing small things. Bring in the grill, the trash cans, the potted plants, the flag pole, the kids' soccer goal. In 90 mph wind, a plastic chair is a projectile. Fill the bathtub for flushing water. Take photos of the yard and the roofline so you have a before.

The annoying truth about the last 24 hours: gas stations run dry, and the ones with fuel lose power and can't pump it. Ice disappears first, before water. Propane exchange cages get emptied by lunchtime. None of that's a conspiracy. It's just 200,000 people having the same thought at the same hour.

Generators are where people get hurt

Every season, carbon monoxide poisoning kills people who ran a generator in the garage with the door open, which isn't the same as outdoors. The CDC guidance is blunt: outside only, at least 20 feet from the house, exhaust pointed away from doors, windows, and vents. Put working CO alarms on every level of the house and test them in May.

Never back-feed a generator into a wall outlet. It energizes the line outside and can kill the lineman working to restore your power. If you want the house wired for it, that's a licensed electrician and a transfer switch, and it's a spring job.

One more: gas goes stale. If your generator has sat since last October with untreated fuel, the carburetor is probably gummed and you'll find out about it at 2 a.m. Run it for 15 minutes in May under a load. Use fuel stabilizer or store it dry.

After the wind stops

Half the injuries happen in the cleanup. Chainsaws, ladders, wet extension cords, nails through sneakers. Slow down. Wear boots and gloves and eye protection, and don't cut anything above your shoulders or anything with a limb bent under tension unless you know what a spring pole does.

Stay off the roads. Standing water hides washed-out pavement and downed lines, and every driveable lane belongs to the utility crews for a few days. Assume every wire is live.

For food, the old rule holds: a closed refrigerator holds about four hours, a full freezer about 48. When in doubt, throw it out.

Then go knock on doors. The widow two houses down doesn't own a chainsaw and won't ask you for one. The family with the newborn needs ice more than you do. That's the part of preparedness no checklist puts on the list, and it's the part people remember ten years later.

Most years, the storm turns and you eat the canned peaches in November feeling a little foolish. Good. Buy the batteries anyway.