Saturday, October 13, 2007

You don’t have to be an expert weather forecaster to know weather related hurricane preparedness!

Emergency Advisories Great Disaster Information Resource In A Hurricane

Learning about meteorological conditions is an excellent emergency preparedness way to help protect your home. These advisories can help families to know when to prepare for an emergency evacuation that will provide the most safety, be cost effective an as comfortable as possible. Additionally it will inform loved ones to the need to protect properties against storm surge and wind damage.

A great resource for this sort of disaster preparedness information is the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Service Also known as NOAA. Your local weather forecast on TV is also good since those weather specialists are well versed in your local situation as ell as trained in meteorological data assessment to help us non-experts know what to expect in a tropical storm.

The most important thing is to always be emergency prepared for any sort of disaster. Even if a disaster has not hit this hurricane season it will hit sometime soon as well as the potential for other forms of disasters. So by getting prepared is a wise and best ticket to a safer and more comfortable ride through the chaos of a disaster situation.

COMMENTS WELCOMED!

Please share your thoughts, emergency preparedness tips and stories here on this blog.

All I ask is that everyone be respectful and sensitive of each other and that identifying information about a person who is not the author be limited to protect their privacy.

Be Safe

Terrie

www.trainforahurricane.com

Monitoring Weather Another Element Of Preparedness

by Broderick Perkins

These days, being a savvy home owner includes having a basic knowledge of meteorological conditions that could make or break you, your family and your home.

Just ask Gulf Coast residents.

In many cases, a lack of emergency preparedness exacerbated devastation caused by astronomical phenomenon that were forecast well in advance.

Weather conditions expected in 2006 could further hammer home that message, especially if property owners again fail to heed advisories like one issued last week by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Service.

The warning should serve as advice to property owners to either move from riskier areas, shore up property to protect it from harsher than normal weather or otherwise prepare for the worse and hope for the best.

Not unlike forecasts issued well before the 2005 hurricane season, NOAA announced the official return of a weather pattern known as La Niña.

Just as El Niño heats up the Pacific Ocean surface, cousin La Niña has an ocean surface cooling effect. Both generally exacerbate existing climatic trends, this is, normally hot arid areas suffer warmer temperatures and drought conditions and normally colder, moist regions get colder and wetter.

"In mid-January the atmosphere over the eastern North Pacific and western U.S. began to exhibit typical La Niña characteristics in response to the cooling in the tropical central Pacific Ocean," said Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher, undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator.

"This pattern will favor continued drought in parts of the South and Southwest from Arizona to Arkansas and Louisiana, and above normal precipitation in the Northwest and the Tennessee Valley area."

Periodic precipitation in the drought areas and dryness in the stormy areas also are typical within the larger scale climate pattern described above, NOAA said.

NOAA also said La Niña events generally favor increased Atlantic hurricane activity, but because the current La Niña was only recently verified, it's too soon to tell how this particular La Niña will exacerbate the 2006 hurricane season.

"It is too early to say with confidence what effects this La Niña event will have on the 2006 hurricane season," said Jim Laver, director of the NOAA Climate Prediction Center.

La Niña events recur approximately every three to five years. The last La Niña occurred in 2000-2001 and was a relatively weak event compared to the 1998-2000 event.

Keep in mind, during the landmark 2006 hurricane season, Mother Nature did not spawn a La Niña or EL Niño pattern.

The message is clear.

It's not about just including the Weather Channel in your couch surfing routine.

It's about not breathing a sign of relief when one bad weather season is over.

Another one is sure to follow.

Know when and where it'll hit. Prepare.

The sky won't all fall at once, but the pieces that do come crashing down can leave you homeless.

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