(no subject)

[rivka]

Apparently, Hurricane Isabel - now 1mph short of being a Cat 5 storm - is expected to make landfall somewhere on the East Coast, between North Carolina and New Jersey. My local weather report, however, is remarkably bland.

Some houses in Baltimore have big wooden shutters that cover the windows. I've always thought of that as a lovely, quaint decorative touch, but now I'm starting to consider that there might be other uses. We're inland, so you wouldn't think there would be all that much of an issue, but Washington DC is even further inland, and

In Washington, D.C., emergency officials were working on acquiring additional sandbags, and planned to begin a public education campaign and meet with other department and critical services leaders Monday.

"Then we're going to pray," said Peter LaPorte, director of the Emergency Management Agency.

I poked around a little online, looking for hurricane advice, but I didn't care much for what I found. Sure, we'll go out and buy some bottled water, extra batteries, bagged ice, and food that doesn't need cooking - but surely we're not going to need to shut off all our utilities and crouch on the floor in an inside room with our heads covered. Not in Baltimore.

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Last year, about this time, there was a hurricane whose remains made it all the way to Waco. (I remember this because I was in a two-person sailboat at the time.) Category 5 hurricanes are no joke, ever, and Baltimore will be closer to it than Waco was. So watch yourself, sweet!

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yikes! You be careful, Miss - whoops, I mean Dr. - Sailing-in-a-Hurricane!

Baltimore is far north enough that if the hurricane gets up here it will have slowed down considerably from all the colder water. But we're still planning to take care.

The National Weather Service is recommending that we plan the same way we'd plan for a major winter storm, so I'm going to go out and buy a big bag of salt and a shovel. ;-)

Seriously: we'll stock up so that we'd be prepared for several days' worth of power outage, and won't plan to do any real travel. I think we'll be fine all snugged up inside our house.

Because I was trained as an engineer long ago...

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

I recommend increasing your stash of comestibles to a week's duration. When I was at Purdue for an improbable winter storm (it closed down interstates for two days), the recovery period included depleted supplies at the grocery stores for 3 days pas the worst of the weather.

Re: Because I was trained as an engineer long ago...

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember that from the 2+ feet of snow we got this winter. For a day or two after the streets were all cleared, the local supermarket looked like something out of Eastern Europe - long empty shelves with just a few brands of a few things stocked.