> Fill up your vehicle’s fuel or battery before any big storm

This is such a big one for any event anytime. Better yet, never go below a half-tank on your vehicle. You’ll almost always have enough range to get out of dodge and also have a mobile cooling / heating / charging station if you’re stuck in place. I grew up on an island and what I thought was universal storm advice was clearly not.

During Helene I had to drive 80+ miles from the Clemson, SC area through to Asheville to bail out my sister-in-law and her husband and their two month old stranded in Asheville. They had only two gallons of diesel in their F-250. The drive up I-26 looked like some kind of zombie flick with a line of 50-100 cars on every interstate off ramp leading up to defunct gas stations with crowds of people just meandering about.

If you’re a mild prepper type, GMRS radios (or a jailed broke Baofeng…) are a great tool. I had no cellular service for the majority of my drive. I was able to stay in comms with my “convoy” the whole way. Perhaps as importantly, a spare, unused Jerry can is incredibly valuable. In my case I have gasoline cans but not diesel and so I had to pay a greedy boomer 3-4x market rate to buy one of his four 5 gallon cans in the Lowe’s checkout line to get a clean fuel canister.