Hurricane Season Peaks September 10. Here Is What I Actually Keep Packed.

Hurricane season does not end in August. It gets serious in September.

The National Hurricane Center puts the statistical peak of the Atlantic season at September 10. The water is at its warmest, the upper winds relax, and disturbances roll off Africa one after another. Roughly sixty percent of an average season's activity is still ahead on that date. The season does not close until November 30.

I have spent a lot of Septembers in water that was not supposed to be there. I want to give you the list I actually use, and then I want to tell you the part about rescue that nobody in a boat wants to say out loud.

Where this comes from

I was a search and rescue specialist in the Marine Corps. After I got out I founded a disaster response group and we ran into storms for years, hurricane after hurricane, pulling people out of flooded homes. My best single day on the water was fifty people. I have written about that day and about the night before a storm elsewhere on this site.

So this is not a list I copied from a pamphlet. It is what has been in my truck.

The list

Documents in a dry bag. Driver's license copies, insurance policy numbers, birth certificates, the deed or lease, a list of every medication with dosages, and the phone numbers you would need if your phone died. Photograph all of it and email it to yourself too. The dry bag is for when the photos are on a phone at the bottom of a creek.

Medications, two weeks. Pharmacies flood. Roads close. Two weeks of anything you cannot go without, in a waterproof container, rotated so it is never expired.

Water and food you do not have to cook. More water than you think. Canned food with a manual opener. Do not plan on the stove.

Power. Two battery packs for phones, fully charged the night before, and a way to charge them from the truck. A hand crank radio. Headlamps, not flashlights, because you will need both hands.

Cash. Card readers go down with the power. Small bills.

Shoes you can walk out in. Not flip flops. Boots or closed shoes by the door for every person in the house, including the kids.

A whistle for every person. Voices give out. Whistles do not. If you are on a roof at two in the morning, that whistle is how a boat finds you in the dark.

A bright rag or towel. Something you can tie to a railing or wave from a window. We find houses by color.

The pet plan. Carrier, leash, food, and a decision made in advance about whether the animal goes with you. Do not make that decision on the porch with water rising.

Full tank of gas. Always, from September 1 on. Stations run dry before the storm and have no power after it.

When to leave and when to stay

Here is the part where I am going to argue against my own instinct.

If your county issues a mandatory evacuation for your zone, leave. I know the arguments for staying. The traffic, the cost, the looters that mostly do not exist, the last time it turned out to be nothing. I have heard every one of them from a man standing in waist deep water in his living room.

But I will also say the other side, because it is true. Not every storm requires everyone to go. If you are outside the surge zone, in a sturdy structure, above the flood line, and you have the list above, sheltering in place is often the right call and the roads are safer with you off them. The answer is not always leave. The answer is know your zone before the season, not during it.

The thing nobody in a boat says out loud

Rescue is not a plan.

We come after the storm. Not during it. Nobody launches a boat into a hurricane. If you stay in a surge zone against a mandatory order, there may be eighteen to thirty six hours where nobody can physically reach you, no matter how many of us are staged at the county line waiting for the wind to drop.

I have pulled people out who were grateful and people who were furious that it took a day. Both were right to feel what they felt. But the day was never ours to give back. The storm decides when the boats go in.

So when somebody says they will just wait for rescue, I want them to hear it from somebody who has been the rescue: we are coming, and we are slower than you think, and the list above is what keeps you alive until we get there.

One thing to do today

Find out your evacuation zone. Your county emergency management office publishes it. Write it on the fridge.

That single fact, known in advance, is worth more than everything else on the list.