Getting Ready for Hurricane Season and A Solar Garden Light Experiment

We have been in Florida 9 years now. The first year we were here, 2005, was when Hurricane Katrina hit LA. We have not had a big one hit the Gulf Coast area since then. We are probably due. Every year I put together an emergency Hurricane Kit. When we lived up north I always had one for the Winter months. Of course it had much different supplies. In the past I have always used a bin, as shown in the image to the link. This year, I decided to use a large tote bag. Why? Because the bin is a pain to navigate. It would be hard for one person to carry alone, and probably need two at most times. My son is strong enough to carry it, as am I, but I just think the bag would be much easier to move. I will share a picture of the bag, and its contents, when I get it completed. Hurricane season has already started, but it is very rare to get a big storm this early. I have started on putting it together, and it should be done in a few days. The biggest issue is always food. How much food, what kind of food, etc. I have started storing water, so that is not a big deal.

This next part has to do with batteries. Every year my kids take the flashlights and poof they are never to be found again. Every year, I have to buy a ton of batteries, and new flashlights. Kind of expensive and a pain. So, I got thinking. If you read my craft blog, then you know that I have been painting bottles and turning them into solar powered garden lights. I have ten of them now. This has allowed me not to have to use the outside light at night, to ward of weirdos. The motion sensitive light, in the back is still active. I started to wonder, how long do the solar lights stay on at night. I really didn't know since it is always daylight when I get up. So, I read some other websites, and blogs to see if anyone else knew. The results were not good, definitely not all night and only a few hours were the most popular results. Well, me being me, I decided to try it for myself. So, last night at 8 PM I brought in one of the garden lights. I put it in my bathroom, and waited. Eventually I went to bed. I got up once during the night, at 3, and it was still lit and nice and bright. When I got up at 7 in the morning, it was still lit. Hard to tell how bright it was at that time of day. At 10 AM I returned it to the garden, and it was still lit. So, you are probably thinking I spent a lot of money on these lights and that is why I got good results. Nope, I paid .97 cents at Walmart, and 1 dollar at the Dollar Tree. We do get a ton of sunlight in FL, this time of year, so that might be why my results were so good. I have no idea. What I do know is that I will be picking up more of these and putting them in the garden so they are charged and ready to go should we ever lose power for an extended amount of time, or have to evacuate. The only other thing I am unsure of, is do they charge even if you don't pull out the little tab, or only if you pull out the little tab. Will have to figure that out.

Well It Has Been An Interesting Couple Of Days

I have probably mentioned in the past that my husband joined the town volunteer fire dept in January. While he has not completed full training he does respond to calls, and will finish up the end of this summer. I was canceled Sat night from my job, so he had all weekend to respond to calls. I may have also mentioned how dry it is here, and my irritation with the town for letting people burn in the town limits. Well, Sunday evening the kids and I were outside enjoying the semi cool evening. We heard a very large explosion and Caitlin said, oh its burning! Great, what is burning? I turned around and the neighbor across the street had flames and smoke coming from his yard, and I heard his wife way are you OK? Now I was not properly dressed to investigate, nor is there a way to get out of the back yard, so I told my husband to go check him. As he crossed the yard the call went out for the fire dept. Even though he was right there looking at it he had to get in the car and drive to fire dept. The gentleman was OK, and no damage done. He had a paint bucket in a burn barrel burning. So that ended and Monday came along. About 2 I went out to water my poor plants as it appeared no rain was coming again. The sky was clear and it was excruciatingly hot. Within 30 minutes we could hear thunder and the wind was picking up. I quickly put on the weather radar, and sure enough just that fast there were severe thunderstorm warnings up for all surrounding counties. My husband came in just about that time, and it had started to pour. The power started flickering on and off, and then went out. At that same time I heard this loud growling noise, like a huge animal was outside. I said what is that? Then it stopped. My husbands alarm went off, and as he was going out he said that noise might have been the tree knocked down in the yard. Yep one of our, thank goodness, small trees had been blown over, and our bigger tree had limbs down all over the yard. The lightning was fierce. We were out of power for six hours, which is a long time here, but there were so many trees and lines down around town that it took them a very long time to fix them all. This all brings me to my final point. It is hurricane season now here in FL, severe weather is not rare here. FL is the lightning capital of the US, with thousands of strikes daily. It is time to get your emergency preparedness kits ready to go. Most people don't do this and then find themselves unprepared when it happens. I don't put all the things in there they say you must, how would I ever move it, say if I had no car and had to move two children, two dogs, and a rabbit. It just is not feasible. But I always have the basic emergency items we would need, and I am always aware of the weather this time of year. It snuck up on everyone yesterday.