More Preparation For Hurricane Season And Barry’s Arrival

As mentioned in a previous blog post on my latest storm footage, I spent Saturday continuing to gear up for this hurricane season, and anticipating the arrival of what’s left of Tropical Storm Barry by buying a NOAA Weather Radio with SAME Technology along with some digital video cassette tapes at Radio Shack. Now, for those of you, who don’t have a Weather Radio, I strongly urge you to get one. I already had a Weather Radio in the house, but I wanted to have something that was a bit better. With this new radio, I have the ability to customize it so that I don’t have to listen to the weather reports for hours on end, and still get the watches and warnings that I want. You can also configure the radio to receive things such as Amber Alerts, Earthquake Alerts, and Local Emergencies.

In addition, you can taylor the storm alerts to come up only when your area is threatened. For example, living in Middlesex County in New Jersey, I can program the radio to alert me only when severe weather threatens the county. All I have to do is go to the NOAA web site, and get the six digit FIPS code, and enter that into my weather radio, and I’ll be alerted the next time a severe thunderstorm, heavy rain, or a tropical storm threatens my area. I can also set it up for neighboring areas as well like Hunterdon, Mercer, Monmouth, Somerset, and Union Counties as well. The FIPS code is a six digit code that breaks down like this: the first two digits are for the region your county is in, the next two are for the state, and the last two are for your county itself. FIPS stands for Federal Information Processing Standards. More importantly though, this weather radio has better reception, and I can take it on the road.

With my latest purchase, I have so far done the following to get ready:

  • Got a fresh supply of AA, AAA, 9 volt, C and D batteries.
  • Made sure that all my electronic gadgets used for severe weather had fresh batteries.
  • Made sure all flashlights, shortwave, and weather radios were in working order.
  • Purchased a portable shortwave radio.
  • Purchased a portable NOAA weather radio.
  • Purchased a first aid kit.
  • Obtained storm preparedness and safety literature from my local Emergency Management Office.
  • Ordered an evacuation procedures CD Rom from my local Emergency Management Office.

Despite all these things that I’ve done in recent weeks, I still have a long way to go as you can see, but I’m very happy with the progress made. I also mentioned that I was getting ready for the arrival of Barry’s remnants. Tropical Storm Barry made landfall near Tampa, Florida on Saturday after becoming the second named storm of the season late Friday afternoon. The storm brought much needed rain to the Sunshine state as well as neighboring Georgia before weakening to a depression, and then transitioning to an extratropical system. More details will be posted on this shortly.