I like WeatherBug (app or .com) Admittedly, I haven’t researched their origins, but I’ve always been happy with their free services. The have some educational programs/grants that they do and if someone wants their annual “premium” service, it is less than $10/year. I’ve never upgraded and find their lightning strike information very useful. 

No, I haven’t read that or watched the seminar. I’ve been taking a little break from the internet. I’ll add both to my list though. I took my kids to the Hatfield Marine Science Center a few weeks ago. Such a great place to visit. Tons of interactive activities, including several on EQ, tsunami, and wave energy, and way better than the overly expensive aquarium IMO. 

@Carlotta – Can Friday’s report contain information on active shooter preparedness for both adults and school children? My heart is breaking right now and I feel so powerless to keep my children safe from this f**ked world. 😥

Good point! We have a small first aid supply without medications that we keep in the back of our car, but our large first aid and trauma kit that does have medicines is kept in the house unless we go on a road trip. When we do that it comes in the house/hotel with us and isn’t left in a hot car if at all possible. 

We’ve had a few small ones recently.  Anytime we travel more than 5 miles we have our go bags in the car for each family member on the trip. Last weekend, over an hour from home, boys found a mud hole to play in. 🙄 Thankfully each of their bags had a warm, dry set of clothes we could change them into.  There’s been a series of spring storms blowing through that are playing havoc with the power flickering multiple times during the day. My UPS system has saved me from having to lose work on my computer or wait for the modem to reboot each time. Such a great investment! Extra seeds on hand. A freak April freeze wiped out the early sprouts in our garden. We were able to re-start from our seed stash and thankfully haven’t moved any outside yet as we have had freak May frost warnings and temps in the 30’s every night this week. 😞

I thought it was great! Hope you’re feeling better soon! Thank you for all of the work you put into these. 

Thank you, Gideon! Great advice and timely too! I’ve been feeling a bit of by out lately and frustrated that I haven’t done more to prep for whatever the future holds. Then on Friday, I hauled out my inventory spreadsheet and realized it had been months since I had updated it. When I started looking through our supplies, I realized that I had actually made a ton of progress over the last 6 months. I had actually surpassed a couple of food storage goals! Just like your Burnout Tip #1, I felt calmer and was proud of what I’ve accomplished. 

I’m a big believer in redundancy, so I try to buy things that can be used in more than one way. For my generator, it’s dual fuel. But I also have a Jackery that can be charged via wall outlet, generator, my car or the solar panel. I use a CPAP at night, so the portability, longevity of the charge, and multiple charging options of the Jackery give me the ability to run my CPAP no matter how long the power outage lasts.  For our BOBS, they serve two purposes: 1. We frequently travel through a wooded/mountain area that has no cell service and frequent landslides that could cut us off from returning home for several hours or overnight. 2. Wildfires are a concern and quick evac may be required. With two young children our bags have what we need to be away from home for up to 3 nights, basic first aid, and water purification,  but not necessarily all the other things someone that is planning to hike through the woods would have.  Our car has a larger kit with flares, water, food, tools, jumper cables, fire extinguishers, ax, trauma kit, and blankets. We keep our BOBS either in the car or in the garage next to the car for quick evac.  We also have a BOB for our pets and their carriers stored next to the car in case of a wildfire evac. 

Oops! Thanks for letting me know. I fixed it. 

That is an awesome thing to do for the community! I was going to recommend the Lifestraw Community but that is way less than the system you currently have or are looking for. We have the family one that Gideon mentioned, but I’ve been contemplating adding the community version recently. 

Thank you!! That is all very helpful. We do have a dual-fuel generator and a small Jackery, so I think we’re good there. Definitely want to get some more solar panels for the Jackery and maybe try to make a microgird as another device option. Will stick to alternately running the generator for the big appliances. 

That Microgrid article was very interesting. I’ll check out your grid in a can post too. What would it take to scale up either project to run a refrigerator or freezer? What about a UPS backup system. I have one from Costco that powers our modem, my work computer and accessories and internet phone, I think it lasts a few hours, but I’m curious if I could use a solar panel to run/recharge it?

Thank you for sharing! This is year two for our garden and I think it will be an equally big learning experiment for us this year. Not sure how much the crazy April weather we had in the PNW this week is going to affect things though. Everything was sprouting beautifully last week before the sleet, hail, and freezing temperatures hit.  We did have some accidental gardening occurring. My husband discovered several carrots that had grown over the winter, along with some spinach and lettuce. We were also surprised to find a bunch of pumpkin sprouts. Apparently he let the kids bust up their pumpkins in the garden boxes after Halloween this year and now we have pumpkins growing. Lol. Our everbearing strawberries have also tripled in quantity since last year. I guess we’ll know in a few weeks how much the weather has damaged things, but that should be enough time to replant for the summer if necessary. 

I just posted similar above before reading yours. Love my Willamette Valley! I have been looking into Washington areas if we decide to relocate. Climates in both states are very similar, but for now we have no reason to move. (Unless an affordable multi-family homestead appears like magic, but that is highly unlikely. Lol.)

I’m in the PNW and we’ve thought a little about relocating, but honestly every location has its pros and cons. Sure we might have wildfires, drought, high crime in Metro areas, cascadia, volcanoes and the occasional wind storm or ice storm, but we don’t have hurricanes or devastating tornadoes. 🤷‍♀️😂 What we do have here is our community, our home, our family and lots of prep/planning for possible emergencies and that lets me sleep at night (mostly). 😊

😂😂