“We interrupt Major Mom’s writings about road trips and being “basic” while we discuss more pressing issues….”

When one lives on the U.S. Gulf Coast, and it’s hurricane season, you have to be ready to put your life on hold whenever a system is forecast to head in your direction.  We learn to keep supplies nearby: batteries, flashlights, Leatherman tools, propane, a camp stove, etc.  We learn to assess our food on hand, and work through the perishables first, in case we lose power.

With all the Tropical Storm Debby news dominating the airwaves, with Jim Cantore reporting from the beach right up the street from here, with my friends on Facebook talking about the craziness they’re seeing at our local Walmart, it’s hard to remain calm.

But I think Dave and I will be quite calm.  We’ve dealt with the east coast of Florida in 2004, and we saw some serious craziness: a week of empty gas pumps to looting to crowds of people ambushing the Publix employee when he rolled a cart of fresh milk to the dairy aisle.

For Miss Debby, the meteorologists are pretty darned stumped.  Forecasting storm intensity depends on the storm track, and the computer models aren’t agreeing on what the storm track is going to do.  So yeah…confusion and delay.  All I can offer to my local friends who are similarly preparing for this storm is to remain aware.  Official updates to the official forecast come out at least every 6 hours (7am, 1pm, 7pm, 1am CDT), you can follow the National Hurricane Center on Twitter and Facebook for the updates to get pushed to you, or you can subscribe to their e-mail service to have watches/warnings and advisories pushed to your email inbox.

I recommend FEMA’s Ready.gov Hurricane Preparedness website, which is a comprehensive source of information that covers the before, during and after event topics regarding tropical weather.  There’s a good suggested preparedness kit here.

All in all, just remain aware, use the media tools available to you, and above all: “Keep Calm and Carry On!”