Are you prepared for this year's hurricane season? It's already here...
Well, the summer may not officially be here yet, but judging by the weather, it sure feels like it. The high in the Central Florida areas today will be 94 degrees, but the heat index was 105 degrees yesterday, per Brian Shields, meteorologist for WFTV Channel 9. Make sure you take in plenty of water and use sunscreen if you go out this week.
Safe to say, no matter where you are in Central Florida, it's hot. And this is all coming in the wake of a few odd weather patterns that have raised eyebrows and forced localities to take action.
This past month, in May of 2021, Orlando received only 0.17 inches of rain, which is about the size of three dimes laid down flat and stacked atop one another. Seriously, take out your tape measure and measure 0.17 inches, and you'll see how much rain the city of Orlando got for the entire month last month. That's only 0.4318 centimeters, so less than a half of a single centimeter.
It's three orders of magnitude smaller than the dryest month Orlando has ever had.
But the typically dry May weather is now beginning to fold over into the typically wet June weather and with that comes hurricane season.
The season began on June 1st and meteorologists are already placing their bids on what kind of a season it will be. The last couple of years have been quiet in Orlando, with the last storm that I remember coming through the Central Florida area being Hurricane Irma, in 2017.
Before that, I have to think back to 2004, that crazy record-setting year for Orlando and Central Florida in general, when we got tagged by four hurricanes back to back, Charley, Francis, Ivan, and Jeanne.
For those of us who were there, we all remember how long many of us went without power. Some friends' houses and businesses went down for months, as storm after storm barrelled through the center of the state. Francis, the slow-moving behemoth, hovered over my house for what felt like days, the winds just severe enough to prevent returning to ordinary life. 2004 was a year for the record books, just like last year's hurricane season was.
Last year in 2020, the Hurricane Season in the Atlantic broke records, with 30 named storms. As most of you know by now, when a storm turns into a tropical cyclone, it's given a name (Irma, Maria, Charley, Ivan, etc.). On average, 14 storms per year are named by weather services, so the fact that we had a full 30 systems is massive.
The threat of dealing with thirty possible hurricanes is no joke.
And now this year, forecasters are anticipating another doozy. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicting between 13 and 20 named storms. And of those storms, they presume between 6 and 10 of them could become full-fledged hurricanes, with between 3 and 5 of them becoming major hurricanes. A major hurricane is defined by them as a storm that reaches over 111 mph winds.
Now whether those storms hit us here in the Orlando area or not is anybody's guess.
But if the great toilet paper shortage of 2020 (in the wake of the pandemic) and the great gas shortage of 2021 (in the wake of the pipeline hack) have taught me anything, it's that it's never too early to be prepared. And you don't want to get caught by surprise rushing to stores with empty shelves to buy what you need after it's already sold out everywhere.
So take simple precautions. Perhaps buy an extra couple of cans of canned food per week, some candles, batteries, and other things you might need just in case a storm comes. It might pay huge proverbial dividends to get it out of the way early.
Ordering solar chargers could mean the difference between having a phone and not having a phone during a hurricane. It's smart to be prepared ahead of time.