Beyond the Forecast: The Critical Path to Weather Preparedness

Augason Farms affiliate link https://augasonfarms.com?sca_ref=9315862.VpHzogdDNu

Fear not—unless you're unprepared for emergencies. As severe weather events intensify across the country, practical preparedness has never been more crucial.

The numbers don't lie. Already in 2025, we've experienced 1,400 confirmed tornadoes, vastly exceeding the 1,200 total from all of 2024. One outbreak alone claimed 28 lives in mid-May. Flash flooding has devastated communities from New Mexico to the Carolinas. Yet 90% of Americans still don't have a basic 72-hour emergency kit ready.

Whether facing tornadoes with minimal warning or hurricanes with days of lead time, your response strategy must be tailored to the threat. For those in traditionally sturdy structures, sheltering in place during tornado warnings remains safest—but manufactured home residents must seek sturdier refuge. Hurricane evacuation requires planning multiple escape routes rather than relying on a single highway that will inevitably become congested when thousands flee simultaneously.

Transportation preparedness deserves special attention. Maintain at least half a tank of fuel in your vehicles at all times, supplemented by safely stored fuel reserves at home. When Hurricane Hugo struck, evacuees drove as far as Boston seeking hotel rooms as accommodations filled hundreds of miles inland. Having predetermined evacuation destinations with family or friends provides security that last-minute planning cannot.

Emergency food supplies represent another critical preparation component. While there's satisfaction in self-sufficiency practices like canning and freeze-drying, commercial emergency meals offer convenience that shouldn't be overlooked. The ideal approach combines both—maintaining home-preserved foods while supplementing with grab-and-go options for rapid evacuation scenarios.

Don't wait until warnings blast across your phone to prepare. Developing multiple evacuation routes, maintaining adequate fuel, establishing distant safe havens, and preparing proper emergency kits today ensures you won't become another statistic when disaster strikes tomorrow. Subscribe now and join our growing community of practical preppers facing an increasingly unpredictable world with confidence rather than fear.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Podcast Updates
• 2:08 Augason Farms Affiliate Program Announcement
• 5:54 Severe Weather Trends in 2025
• 9:16 Evacuation Planning and Multiple Routes
• 12:52 Fuel Management for Emergencies
• 15:02 Final Thoughts and Thanks

Transcript

Professional Voiceover Guy: 0:00

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm warning. Welcome to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, where prepping doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Coming to you from a well-defended, off-grid compound high in the mountains, coming to you from his Florida room in Richmond, virginia Neither off-grid nor well-defended, unless you count as chickens and cats, here is your host, keith hey y'all, this is Keith, and welcome back to the Common Sense Practical Prepper podcast, july 31st 2025.

Keith: 0:48

First off, I want to take a minute and thank everybody who listens to the podcast. Over the last 90 days, there's been about a 37% increase in listenership. I also take the time to read all of the reviews. So for those of you that have left the reviews both good and bad I appreciate the extra time you take out of your day to leave those reviews because it really helps me a lot when I try to form new content. So I want to give a shout out to some of the folks that are new to the podcast, some new cities that have recently popped up McAdoo, pennsylvania, McAdoo I mean, how cool is that A name for a city Hampton, new Hampshire, alameda, california, and I'm going to try this town in Germany, zindenfegen, and it's in the area of Baden-Württemberg. I hope I didn't butcher it too bad. My fans in Germany. If anybody wants to get a hold of me practicalpreppodcast at gmailcom I'm also on the Twitter or the X. The handle is prep_ podcast. Okay, with those administrative things out of the way, I am excited to announce that I am now part of the affiliate program with Augason Farms.

Keith: 2:08

Now, for those of you who are not familiar with Augason Farms, they're a company that makes long-term food supply, survival food, emergency food supplies very similar to Patriot Supply, ReayWise and some of those other companies. Now I've tried all of them and a lot of them are very good. Not every single recipe does it for me, but a lot of these recipes I really, really enjoy. So, when it came down to it, I enjoy the variety that Augason Farms have. The pricing is very competitive with the other companies. It's a very competitive market, don't get me wrong. But what I'm going to do, I'm not going to blast everybody with Augustine Farm links and that sort of thing. But if I do run across a deal, regardless of the company, I'm going to go ahead and promote that. I'm going to go ahead and put that mention in the podcast. Regardless if it's Augason and Farms or Patriot Supply or ReadyWise or ReadyHour or all the other different companies out there, I'm going to go ahead and put a link in the show description in the show notes for the podcast. And this is an affiliate link and what this does if you go to the affiliate link and place an order, I get a small percentage If you go to the affiliate link and place an order, I get a small percentage, a very small percentage, of the total order. That helps support the podcast.

Keith: 3:31

Hosting podcasts aren't free. There's all sorts of little add-ons and filters you can add. Again, it's not a super expensive hobby. Like any hobby, you can spend $100 or a million dollars. It just depends on how involved you want to get. So also, if you click that affiliate link when you go to checkout, here comes the coupon code that you hear about all the time, PODCASTPREP will get you an extra 10% at checkout. I really appreciate the support.

Keith: 4:01

Again, I really enjoy doing the podcast as a hobby and I also enjoy, you know, prepping. It's a. It's a hobby, I guess, but it's much more involved than that and I believe it's very important to have a variety of food in your prepping pantry. I can a lot. I freeze, dry a lot, but there's and I also supplement it with the food storage pantry that's run by the Mormon church not too far from my house. So I have a little bit of everything. I have a five gallon bucket of rice or whatever it happens to be, sugar and flour. I would normally get from the food storage pantry down the road.

Keith: 4:38

And then the convenience of a lot of these companies promote their product and they're in buckets, which means if you need it you just grab the bucket, or you just grab the package with the little handy dandy handle and you put it in your go bag, you put it in the car, you grab the kids, throw them in the family truckster and you get on down the road. So there's a convenience factor. So I'm all about convenience. I'm all about not spending more time than I have to on my preps. However, when it comes to canning and freeze drying, there to me there's a sense of accomplishment. When I bring out a few trays of strawberries or broccoli or freeze dried Skittles or whatever I happen to be doing, there's a there's a sense of accomplishment or pride, I guess, when you actually do something yourself. But it's difficult to get away from the convenience and that's what a lot of these companies promote. The recipes are really good. Again, not all of them are fantastic, but there's some that are really really good.

Keith: 5:36

And again, I'm not going to blast everybody and talk about Augason Farms 24-7. If you would please support the podcast, hit the affiliate link podcastprep at checkout get you an extra 10%. Okay, I want to talk about prepping and severe weather. When I was thinking earlier today, I was wondering are we having a outbreak? Are we having more tornadoes and floods and flash floods and severe weather? Are we having more this year than previous years? Or am I just paying more attention to the Weather Channel and a few other folks that I follow on YouTube? So I actually dug up some stats. So far in 2025, we've had 1,400 confirmed tornadoes. In 2024 total, there was only 1,200 confirmed tornadoes. So already, seven months in, we've exceeded the total number of tornadoes, and I think it was in middle of March. So March 15th I believe March 15th through April 1, there were 145 confirmed tornadoes. Now, that's early in the tornado season. In May, may 16th, there was an outbreak of tornadoes that took 28 lives. Just that outbreak, several tornadoes, several states, and that was a pretty. That was a pretty bad time. Of course, you've got the flooding, the flash flooding New Mexico was recently, kentucky, north Carolina, south Carolina and several other states.

Keith: 7:10

That's why it's important, in my opinion, to have a 72-hour kit. I've preached it a million times. 90% of the population does not have one when it comes to a severe storm and tornadoes. If you pay attention to the weather weather channel, whoever you happen to follow, whatever app you happen to use, you normally have a pretty good lead time. Normally it's several hours for a severe storm. Now for tornadoes maybe not so much, but you do have the ability. If you pay attention to some of these apps and some of these content creators or the weather guy, they'll tell you when a storm is favorable to spawn a tornado and then react accordingly. Folks will tell you that sheltering in place is probably the safest thing to do in the event of a tornado. Thing to do in the event of a tornado. Now, if you live in a trailer park, manufactured home, an RV at a campground, then that is not the place to shelter in place. You need to find a better shelter or you probably just need to get in the car and evacuate as best you can.

Keith: 8:16

Now, when it comes to tsunamis or hurricanes and tsunamis after following an earthquake and then your hurricanes, we have several hours hurricanes, several days of lead time, plenty of time to get your folks, get your supplies and get the heck out of Dodge Tsunamis. The same thing, the tsunami that spawned from the earthquake in Russia. What's that? Monday, late Monday night. We have the ability to track those and, even though it wasn't as bad as it could have been, you always have to err on the side of caution. Hawaii got hit with several waves, some I think the tallest was like six and a half seven feet, don't get me wrong. It caused localized flooding but, as you know, the tsunami that hit Japan gosh, that's been, that's been what 10, 12, maybe 15 years ago. That one was at Fukushima. They hit the nuclear power plant. That was a very bad scene. So you have plenty of time.

Keith: 9:16

When it comes to evacuating, when it comes to bugging out, you need to have multiple routes of egress. A lot of people only know one way to get to work, one way to get home, one way to get to the store, one way to get to grandma's house, only one way to get across town to go to the mall or what have you. You need to invest in multiple routes of egress. If you only know one route and it's closed for whatever reason flooding, construction, a bad accident then you're stuck. Okay, you need to have multiple routes of egress, regardless of where you're going In the event of an evacuation. Let's say, for the tsunami, the folks in Hawaii set of islands. They were very limited in their routes of egress. They just had to get to higher ground as quickly as they could. The folks in Southern California I'm not really sure how well those folks hated the tsunami warnings. I'm not sure what percent of the population moved to higher ground or not, but when it comes to hurricanes we have several days.

Keith: 10:26

Don't wait until the very last minute to evacuate. There's no sense in getting caught in that traffic. Have your 72-hour kit, have everything you need, have the car filled up with gas and you go ahead and evacuate. In many of these states they have dedicated hurricane evacuation routes. Here in Virginia, let's say, you're in Virginia Beach, hampton Roads area, highway 64, for the most part from Virginia Beach to Richmond and vice versa, is three lanes east and west, a hurricane evacuation route. What they do? They take 64 east and they turn it into 64 west. So you have six lanes of traffic going away from Virginia Beach, going westbound, and that has helped a lot. So when you evacuate, evacuate early, get your supplies and go where you need to go. Have a plan If you're in Virginia Beach, are you going to Grandma's house in Baltimore? If you're in Miami, are you going to your cousin's in Atlanta. Have a plan.

Keith: 11:36

A lot of times when folks evacuate, they start making hotel reservations and they realize they're going five and 600 miles inland to get a hotel. Back in the day, a long, long time ago, when Hurricane Hugo hit the East Coast, there were no hotel rooms on the East Coast. There were people driving as far as Boston. Now this hit Florida, north Carolina, south Carolina and parts of Virginia. There are people having to go to Boston or having to go to the middle of Ohio to get hotel reservations. So have a plan. If you have relatives, you have friends. Again, it sounds kind of silly, but if you have relatives in West Virginia, if you have relatives in Ohio or Kansas and you make a plan, hey, in the event we need to evacuate. Grandma, we're coming to you. She'd be happy to see the grandkids anyway. But have a plan. Don't try to do it all willy-nilly, because that's just another factor that can go completely sideways and screw up your evac.

Keith: 12:41

Speaking of evacuation from the Department of Easier Said Than Done always have at least a half of tank of fuel in your vehicle. I'm just as guilty as the next person driving my vehicles. Less than a quarter of a tank. Oh look, the low fuel light came on. I have 50 more miles to go. I'm just as guilty as the next person. So try to have at least a half a tank at all times, especially if you live on the East Coast, on the Gulf Coast of Florida, north Carolina, south Carolina, florida.

Keith: 13:16

Have at least a half a tank of fuel. If you're going to run less than a half a tank, have some fuel on standby at your home and your garage and your shed. Have five or 10 gallons. Have two five-gallon Gary cans or Jerry cans full of fuel ready to put in your vehicle. That's going to help you in several different ways.

Keith: 13:38

When you decide to evacuate, you're going to fill up at home. You're not going to have to worry about finding a gas station and compete with all the other people that don't have enough fuel. So you're going to have to get off the road, which is get off the main evacuation route. Get to a gas station where everybody else and their mom is trying to get gas. Getting to that gas station is going to be difficult. It's going to clog up the roads and it's going to delay your evac. Go ahead, have the half a tank If you need to top it off. You've got the fuel at your home and you're going to be able to go ahead and make a safe, timely evacuation. Again, don't wait to the last minute. You always hear about these people on the news. I'm not evacuating. I've lived here for 20 years and no hurricane is going to drive me out of my house. Okay, well, that's on you pops, but I would suggest evacuating as soon as possible. Do not wait to the last minute.

Keith: 14:32

All right, folks, again, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. I am going to add another little add-on to the podcast. It provides a transcript. I believe it breaks it up into chapters, if I remember correctly. I'm going to add that to this podcast. So hopefully you'll like that. It adds a little bit to the content and you'll be able to you know, kind of pick and choose what you want to listen to. Again, folks, thank you. Thank you so much for listening. It's because of you and the increased listenership that I've been able to go ahead and add a few things and get this affiliate link with Augason Farms. As always, take care of one another, be careful out there, and until next time.

Professional Voiceover Guy: 15:18

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