Hurricanes

Here's what you'll need for getting through a hurricane*:

Water!
Lots of water to drink but also water (you can fill up a bathtub or something) to flush your toilets, etc if the water gets shut off/breaks somewhere. (You'll appreciate it much more than you think.)

Food

It's great if you have a gas stove because those stay on even if your electricity goes off. If not, gas grills are helpful . . . once they outside's not trying to blow you away! No using grills inside!

That's all kinds of dangerous.

Dogs

Dogs might need something to calm them down when a hurricane comes. Tranquilizers (not the kind they shoot bears with when they climb telephone poles, very mild ones) are available from vets and Thundershirts are excellent for calming down anxious dogs. Also, be careful if you have to let them out while it's still windy/crazy rainy. If you have to evacuate anywhere make sure you have them, all their info and things they'll need (food, any medicine, etc.) (I have no idea how cats react to hurricanes.)

Chainsaws

It may sound obvious, but don't use chainsaws. A lot of people use chainsaws to clean up after hurricanes and more people seem to get hurt/killed cleaning up from hurricanes than do from the actual hurricane.

Extracurricular Activities

Make sure you have lots of candles, book lights and flashlights (a crankable weather radio with flashlight, cell charger, etc is great for here) in case there're no lights. The weather radio'll also give you updates on the storm.

What's important to keep from going stir crazy, though and here's where the BOOK INFO comes in, is that you have some books to read, too (and maybe some playing cards)!!

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer is the first in a trilogy about a meteor shower hitting the moon, knocking it off its axis and closer to Earth. A family in the New York area struggle to survive as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and more devastate the US. (The Dead and the Gone is book two; This World We Live In book three.)

Hurricane: A Novel from Amazon: Based on Hurricane Mitch's devastation of Honduras in 1998, Terry Trueman's powerful story is about a young boy's fear and courage in the face of a force of nature too huge to even imagine (I apparently reviewed this for FirstReads but didn't save my review. It's more MG than YA but a good book.

Or, if you're not like me and don't like the outside to set the mood for what you're reading

(I read Trapped by Michael Northrop during a huge snowstorm while I was freezing under a pile of blankets!), some great books I've read recently are:

Summer Series by Jenny Han (reviews: The Summer I Turned Pretty, It's Not Summer Without You, & We'll Always Have Summer)

So Much Closer by Susane Colasanti (review)

Die for Me by Amy Plum (review)

Putting Makeup on Dead People by Jen Violi (review)

Between by Jessica Warman (review)

The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter (review)

Hourglass by Myra McEntire (review)

Most, if not all of these are available for Nook and/or Kindle - and remember using those with wifi off makes them last for a crazy long time :)


*disclaimer: please actually check some disaster preparedness site and don't just rely on me and my experience/memory to tell you!!