My First Hurricane

She went through Hurricane Opal in Montgomery, AL, back in October 1995, and was without power for four days. This is my first hurricane, though, so I'll share some of my thoughts.

This area had good warning, and they began preparing for a much stronger storm earlier this week. As the storm weakened from a Category 5 down to a Category 2, they just kept preparing, because most things had already been set in motion. Things seem calm and matter-of-fact around here.

She did a lot of preparation, so we should be comfortable. We have plenty of water--10 gallons for drinking, two bathtubs full for various things, and several more gallons for drinking. Have all the rechargable batteries charged up. She picked up some extra flashlights this week, so there are at least four in the house now--none are particularly powerful, but we should be OK. We taped the windows yesterday. She's capturing 5-second video clips periodically throughout the day. Winds are at 26 mph, gusting to 41 mph. Rain is steady. We don't have anything to cook on if the power goes out--only an electric stove and microwave here. We do have a good selection of non-perishable items, but we'll get bored with that quickly. She made ice and packed it into the freezer around the frozen items there. They should keep reasonably well, especially if we don't open the freezer for anything. The refrigerator is a different story. We don't have a lot in there, so we'll eat whatever's in there first when the power goes out.

We lost power for about an hour this morning, but it's back on now. Unfortunately, our corded phone, used so we would have a phone in power outages, needs power. Rats! She thought up an alternate plan. The UPS will have power stored in the battery, and the computer will not be on (Yes, the shutdown sequence works, we found that out this morning.), so She'll plug the phone into the UPS just in case.

She says this is no big deal yet, but things will get worse before they get better. Fascinating.