Category: Weather

Letter Re: Observations on Preparedness from a Gulf Coast Hurricane Veteran

Mr. Rawles, I just wanted to let you know how much I have enjoyed your site. I had no idea that there were whole survivalist communities out there until I stumbled on a link by accident. In fact, I didn’t really know that I fit into that category myself. My wife and I live on the Gulf Coast and we discovered the hard way during Hurricane Rita that a bag of trail mix and a bottle of water, was not preparing to evacuate. Eighteen hours in traffic in a hundred and fifty mile traffic jam taught us to find the …


Letter Re: Precipitation and Growing Season as Retreat Locale Criteria

Sir, Regarding your Retreat Areas recommendations: I grew up on a small multi-crop and livestock farm in north western Iowa, with 24 inches of precipitation and 180 frost free days. I have been living in California Eastern Sierra since 1982 , but soon will be leaving. I respectfully submit that your assessment of the agricultural capability of many of the low precipitation/low humidity areas of the western US is vastly overestimated. Western states such as Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico are not farmable by amateurs using conventional means available during any TEOTWAWKI scenario. Obtaining water rights and controlling large …


Two Letters Re: The Big Chill Causes Diesel Gelling Problems in the Lower 48

James: The blog post regarding diesel gelling is correct for the most part. However there are solutions that are easy and inexpensive. There are many aftermarket additives that will keep your fuel oil from gelling and also raise the cetane level of the fuel. The cetane level is similar to the octane level of gasoline, the higher the better it burns. DieselKleen, Stanadyne and others are good choices. My 6.0L Ford F350 gets a full mile per gallon better mileage with the addition of DieselKleen and I have not had a single engine problem in over two years of operation. …


Letter Re: Winter Solstice Slam 2008–Observations from the Pacific Northwest

Hello Jim: I send this to you from the snowy Seattle, Washington metropolitan area where we are digging out of a fairly impressive storm of snow and icy temperatures that have plagued an unprepared area. As a cop and a Preparedness Oriented Person (POP), I have been watching the lead up to and duration of this weather event. Here are some observations: Advance Warning & Notification Folks in these parts complained that there was little warning of the impending snow event. Some stated that since weather forecasters were often wrong, they would be wrong about this. When you had local …


Letter Re: The Recent Storm in New England–A Ready and Able Family

Hi Jim. I have been a long time reader of your blog and have spent quite a bit of money with many of your terrific advertisers. I am writing to tell you about the serenity of my day in the midst of the hard hitting ice storm up here in New England. Thanks to the information you present in your blog and the preparation that I have taken over the last few years, all I had to do to prepare for this storm the day before was two things – fill the fire wood box and fill the bath tub …


Letter Re: My Hurricane Ike Experience

Dear Mr. Rawles, First of all, my heart goes out to all those who truly suffered with loss of life or property as a result of Hurricane Ike. I only had the minor inconvenience of being without electricity in Houston for five days. (There are still over one million in Houston and the surrounding area without power.) So I had a taste of what it is like to be off-grid and learned a few things to share with your readers. It seems a lot of people here had generators which burn lots of precious gasoline. But after a few days …


Three Letters Re: Tropical Storm Ike’s Devastation Works its Way North to Ohio

Hello Jim, This note is in reference to the letter from Melanie and Rick in Columbus about the woman who never thought of using the grill to cook. I had a similar experience with my mother-in-law. While we had power and water, she had lost hers. I offered to bring buckets of water to her house so she could manually refill the toilet tank to flush with(she has septic). Not only did she not think of that, she couldn’t understand the concept. She ended up going to a hotel for a couple of days. People like this will not last …


Observations on a Life on the Gulf Coast During the Hurricane Season

Jim, With [hurricanes] Gustav and Ike paying us a visit, I thought I would send you a note regarding the importance of self reliance versus shelter life. Living in the Gulf South, hurricanes are something you have to prepare for. Government support and shelter will not be there for you in the way you might think. Your lack of supplies or resources when you most need them, depending on the emergency, could mean a thoroughly miserable experience for you and your family at best; or [something far] worse if the emergency is wider and deeper in scope. Start making your …


Letter Re: Tropical Storm Ike’s Devastation Works its Way North to Ohio

Good Morning, Jim, And yes it is a good morning at that. I’m here in the suburbs of Ohio between Dayton and Cincinnati. Our power has returned. I read Larry in Cincinnati’s post this morning, and I know his thoughts and feelings all too well. Like him, we had the preparedness mind set already in place, and fared a bit better than some of our neighbors. I only caught the tail end of your interview on AM 700 WLW in Cincinnati in my truck as I was heading to work ( the company I work for is on a different …


Letter Re: Tropical Storm Ike’s Devastation Works its Way North to Ohio

Hi James! I heard you this morning on WLW [in Cincinnati, Ohio] radio when you did your quick interview. Nice job. It is amazing here in Cincinnati the level of chaos that exists. The power is still out to over half a million people. My power just came back on about 10 minutes ago, but I’m waiting until it stabilizes before shutting down my emergency power system. We had quite a mess with lots of downed trees and power lines, but overall it wasn’t as bad as Houston – thank God! There has been quite a run on gasoline, and …


Letter Re: A SurvivalBlog Reader Prepares for Hurricane Ike

Dear Mr. Editor: Just a quick note to tell you how people that read your blog are preparing for Ike. Thanks for all the great information. I live near Houston in the suburbs, about 60 miles north of Galveston. Most of the stores are open and have plenty of water, drinks, bread, tuna and other canned foods. The stores have done a much better job this time of keeping needed items in stock than they did when Katrina was headed this way a couple years ago. The gas is going fast, and many stations are closed. I filled both my …


Letter Re: National Geographic’s Cover Story on Soil and Food

JWR, Here’s a link to the September 2008 National Geographic cover story about the world’s fragile soils and their diminishing capacity to feed 6.5 billion+ people as well as cautionary examples of places where the soils can no longer support the existing population due to poor stewardship in the past. Pages 92-93 of the hardcopy edition have a great fold out map showing soil fertility areas around the world — a good retreats and relocation general shopping reference (although certainly not detailed enough for researching specific properties). My Best, – Lee in Hurricane Alley


Hurricane Iniki – Some Lessons Learned, by B.

Hurricane Iniki, which struck the island of Kauai on September 11, 1992, was the third-most damaging hurricane in U.S. history and provides some valuable insights into how people react when an entire self-contained community loses most of their creature comforts. By way of background, Kauai is the fourth largest island in the Hawaiian Archipelago. It, along with a small, privately-owned island off its western coast make up the County of Kauai. The population in 1992 was about 50,000. On September 11, 1992, Hurricane Iniki made a direct hit on the island with winds upward of 150 miles per hour. Approximately …


Letter Re: Is a Little Ice Age Approaching?

Hi Jim, Thought you might find this article interesting: Sun Makes History: First Spotless Month in a Century As a scientist (Oceanography) I have been astounded with scientists who can not see the forest through the trees when it comes to global warming. The ocean temperatures have been dropping over the last 1-to-2 years (as well as the overall temperature on Mars). Correlate the ocean temperature with sun spot activity and you do not need any more “proof” as this will show the direct cause-effect relationship of the sun to the temperature of the oceans. Note that if we do …


Letter Re: More Observations on the Aftermath of Hurricane Dolly

Dear JWR and Memsahib, On June 30, in a response to “Help with a Non-Preparedness Minded Spouse”, I shared the thoughts of like-minded men in a group meeting regularly with my husband to prepare for survival needs. Due to the lack of female companionship I was experiencing, and the frustration my husband’s buddies were experiencing, I offered to start a “Ladies Auxiliary” group to motivate the wives to see the value of preparing for emergency survival. Living near the coast of Texas provides us with the challenge of hurricanes each summer, so that became the topic for personal and immediate …