While both of my children have recently battled sick tummies, leaving me to feel like I should wear a poncho around the house, I promise that isn’t what inspired this post. Though it is one of the reasons the blog has been a little quiet for the last week or so.

I have several family members and quite a few friends who live in different parts of Florida. My sister and several childhood friends live in the panhandle and are battening down the hatches if they didn’t get a chance to evacuate.

Whenever a dangerous storm makes landfall and leaves a wake of devastation and flood waters, I hear at least one person ask “Why didn’t they evacuate?” What that tells me is that this person has very little experience, if any, with hurricanes. And if you’re a writer, you might need to know a little something about it for a story someday. Or maybe just because you’re curious. Either way, board up the windows and move to the high ground. Here are 10 Things You Might Not Know About Hurricanes.

1. There is a difference between a recommended/voluntary evacuation and a mandatory evacuation. And if evacuation isn’t mandatory (and in some specific cases even if it is) if you don’t have vacation time, you risk losing your job for not showing up to work.
2. Not everyone has somewhere to go. And if you can’t afford a hotel or the gas to travel to one far enough away, evacuation is difficult. Most government organizations suggest having a plan in place in which you can call on family or friends for help, especially if you don’t have a vehicle of your own, but not everyone has that option.
3. Some emergency personnel must stay to help with the evacuation efforts, help run storm shelters, hospitals, etc. My sister is a nurse who is in the path of Michael. She is on-call during the storm and while everyone else is evacuating, she’s making sure the storm shelters are fully stocked with emergency medical supplies.
4. When people start evacuating, a common obstacle is filling up your gas tank. The lines to get to a pump at your local gas station are going to get long very quickly. And if the station runs out of gas, there likely won’t be a petroleum truck coming to restock it before the storm arrives.
5. If you live on an island, evacuation may be hindered by the wind. Wind gusts of dangerous speeds could mean bridges close down long before the storm arrives.
6. This type of storm is called a hurricane in the Atlantic. In the North Pacific, it might be called a hurricane or a typhoon. In the South Pacific and in the Indian Oceans they are more commonly called cyclones. A rose by any other name.
7. Hurricanes rotate clockwise on one side of the equator, but counter-clockwise on the other.
8. One of the more dangerous parts of a hurricane is the “storm surge”. That means that those high-powered winds are actually pushing water towards the shore causing high waves and flooding. Hurricane Katrina produced the highest storm surge on record at 27.8 feet.
9. The eye of the storm has no rain and no clouds. It is the center of the storm and it is the point around which the rest of the storm rotates. And this is a scary place to be because what follows the eye is the “eye wall”. It is the most dangerous part of the storm with the heaviest rains, darkest clouds, and strongest winds.
10. Hurricanes are given names in alphabetical order each season and a name must wait a minimum of six years to be used again. If the storm gets particularly bad, the name may be retired.

And just in case you need more, I’ll throw in this tidbit: the largest hurricane by diameter was Typhoon Tip in 1979. At its strongest, the storm was 1,380 miles in diameter. That might not help you in a story, but it’s pretty impressive. Note: The name Tip has not yet been retired and there have been two more since 1979.

Please keep those in the path of Hurricane Michael in your thoughts and prayers. And if the storm has cut short your plans for Fall Break, please be considerate of those whose full-time homes are in danger as you complain about returning early to yours.