As a North Jersey native, it’s very rare that we encounter the dreaded hurricane season that affects millions of people each year. Prior to moving to South Florida, I’ve only experienced one hurricane in my life, Sandy, which struck New Jersey two days before Halloween in 2012. It was devasting for our area – power was out for weeks; it was cold, and we even got some snow. Not your typical South Florida storm experience. My friends have also experienced stormy conditions in Texas and have told us that it was that bad that they had to get this austin roofing contractor in to repair their roof. So, I’ve always checked out all potential roofing companies in any area that I live in just in case the inevitable happens. Preparation is key.
As we enter peak hurricane season, I highly recommend planning ahead and being prepared for a storm, whether it be by getting home insurance sorted (this article may help with that) or by other means. My husband and I learned the hard way when we first moved down to Fort Lauderdale two years ago. We arrived four days prior to Hurricane Irma. We were out of power for over 10 days with nowhere to go, every nearby hotel was booked so we had to rough it out in the house where thermostat read 93 degrees each night. On the rough days where we couldn’t possibly fall asleep in that heat we would sit in our car with the AC on and try and get an hour or two of sleep.
Here are some tips and lessons learned from my second hurricane experience:
- Stock up on bottled water, batteries, and dry foods to snack on.
- When Irma hit every nearby restaurant was closed for weeks and we had to travel west to Flanigan’s every night for dinner and wait over 2 hours for a table because it was the only opened restaurant nearby running on a generator. There was also no bottled water available for miles.
- Fill up your gas tank and park in an elevated location.
- Surrounding gas stations were either out of gas or had waits of over an hour to fill up and were only taking cash. In addition, our house is located in a flood zone so we quickly realized we would need to move our car to a different location, we found the downtown municipal garage was open for residents to park. Take advantage.
- Have cash.
- I’m the first to admit that I never, ever have cash on me. It’s a terrible habit that my mother still chides me for to this day. I have a bad habit of buying scratch offs when I have any cash on me, so I try to limit what I carry. During a hurricane, cash is king. Most ATM’s and credit card machines will be down from the power outages and there’s no telling how quickly power will be restored.
Weather reports are predicting a normal to below average hurricane season so let’s send all the positive vibes to the southeast and Caribbean nations for a storm-free season.
