National Hurricane Preparedness Week
#10,099
Although this week's disaster in Texas and Oklahoma prove you don't need a tropical system to produce massive flooding, some of the worst flooding on record has come from slow moving tropical systems - often hundreds of miles inland from where they first came ashore.
On Sunday (see Hurricane Preparedness Week 2015 – Day One) I mentioned 1972's Hurricane Agnes, which caused 113 fatalities - mostly due to inland fresh water flooding - a thousand miles north of where she came ashore in Florida.
But other notable flood-producing storms include 1969's Hurricane Camille which killed more than 100 in Virginia, long after it had lost its tropical punch.
And slow moving tropical storm Allison, which dumped massive amounts of water along its entire path, flooding Houston, Texas with more than 3 feet for rain.
You can read a concise history of some of the most notable hurricanes of the past 115 years on NOAA's Hurricanes in History website.
The point of all of this being that hurricanes are not just a coastal problem, and you can live 1000 miles inland and still be adversely affected by one of these systems.
Later today we should get NOAA's tropical forecast for the 2015 Hurricane season, and while it is expected to come in `below average', it only takes one storm to ruin your entire summer.
Tomorrow we'll look at Hurricane forecasting, and later in the week we'll get into the specifics of hurricane preparedness. In the meantime, consider downloading the updated Tropical Cyclone Preparedness Guide and visiting NOAA's National Hurricane Preparedness Week website.
And finally, even though you'll find a lot of hurricane discussion on the web, when it comes to getting the latest forecast information on an impending storm, your first stop should always be the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida. These are the real experts, and the only ones you should rely on to track and forecast the storm.
If you are on Twitter, you should consider following @FEMA, @CraigatFEMA, @NHC_Atlantic, @NHC_Pacific and @ReadyGov.
