storm-ready

Storm Ready — Household Preparedness Audit & Planner

Overview

Emergency preparedness advice fails people in two ways: it's generic ("have 72 hours of supplies" — meaningless in a 14-day gulf-coast outage), and it's unordered (a 200-item PDF where the life-safety items are indistinguishable from the nice-to-haves). When a named storm is 72 hours out, you don't need a brochure — you need to know what your household is missing, what to do next, and the math for how much water, food, and battery capacity your family actually needs.

This skill is that: region profiles that encode what each hazard actually demands (a hurricane county's 14-day standard vs. tornado country's minutes-long warning), household-specific sizing (4 people + 60-lb dog + CPAP machine = 63 gallons of water, 112,000 kcal, and a battery plan that respects compressor surge), a gap audit against what you've marked as having, and a phase-by-phase countdown checklist from T-72h to recovery — with the P0 rules (generator CO, flood-water depth, fridge discipline) that keep appearing in after-action reports for a reason.

When to Use

• A watch/advisory is issued for your region and the storm is days out → timeline
• Building or reviewing a household emergency kit → audit (mark what you have, see the gaps)
• "How much water/food do we actually need to store?" → water / food
• Sizing a generator, power station, or battery backup → power
• Moving to a new region: understand what its hazards demand → regions
• Don't use for: active life-threatening emergencies (call local emergency services), tornado warnings already in progress (execute your existing plan, don't read docs), or real-time tracking (check NWS/national weather service).

Region Profiles

regions prints this with notes. Region drives: checklist items included, day-counts in quantities, and which countdown phases apply.

Commands

# See region profiles and what each demands
python3 scripts/storm_ready.py regions

# Set up your household (people, pets with weights, region)
python3 scripts/storm_ready.py profile --region hurricane-gulf --people 4 \
    --pets "dog:60,cat:10"

# Gap audit: what you have (✓), partial (~), missing (✗) — P0 gaps listed last
python3 scripts/storm_ready.py audit
python3 scripts/storm_ready.py profile --mark-have radio first-aid flashlights
python3 scripts/storm_ready.py audit          # re-run: gaps shrink

# Sizing math for your household
python3 scripts/storm_ready.py water          # gallons + storage + purification
python3 scripts/storm_ready.py food           # kcal + pantry-basket plan
python3 scripts/storm_ready.py power --list   # known device loads
python3 scripts/storm_ready.py power --loads fridge,cpap,router-modem \
    --battery-wh 2000                          # Wh/day, runtime, surge, rules

# Countdown checklist when a storm is named
python3 scripts/storm_ready.py timeline --region hurricane-gulf

# Full demo on a gulf-coast family (4 people, 2 pets, CPAP)
python3 scripts/storm_ready.py example

Profile lives at ~/.storm-ready.json. --file overrides on any command.

The Math

• Water: 1 gal/person/day drinking+basic (Ready.gov) + pets at ~1 oz/lb/day + optional 50% hygiene cushion → total gallons with container-count breakdown (7-gal aquatainers / 2.5-gal jugs / bottle cases) and three purification fallbacks (boil, bleach dosing, filter limits).
• Food: people × days × 2,000 kcal with a pantry-rotation basket (canned meals first, calorie-dense no-cook foods, region-adjusted: cold regions get cookable options).
• Power: per-load W × h/day = Wh/day; fridge/freezer duty-cycled at 150 W × 8 h; surge awareness (compressor start ×3.5) for inverter/generator sizing; usable battery fraction 0.85 (inverter + depth-of-discharge); power-station ladder showing runtime for 500/1000/2000/3000/5000 Wh banks.

Workflow

1. regions → pick your profile; profile → set people/pets/region.
2. audit → mark what you have (profile --mark-have ); re-run until the P0 gap list is empty.
3. water / food → buy to the numbers, rotate with your pantry.
4. power → if you have medical devices or outages are common, size honestly (including surge); register medical needs with your utility.
5. When a storm is named: timeline --region → work top-to-bottom by phase; T-72h items exist because at T-12h the lines are long and the shelves empty.
6. After: photograph everything before cleanup, insurance first, DisasterAssistance.gov if declared.

Common Pitfalls

1. Running generators/grills indoors or in the garage. CO kills silently every single storm, this is the #1 post-storm death cause that isn't water. Outdoors, ≥20 ft from any window/vent, CO alarm indoors. power repeats this because it must.
2. Driving through flood water. 6 in of moving water floats a car; 12 in takes an SUV. "Turn Around Don't Drown" is in the during phase for a reason.
3. Generic 72-hour advice in a 14-day region. A gulf-coast hurricane kit that would sail in Kansas is 5× undersized. The region profile exists precisely so the numbers match the hazard.
4. Forgetting pets in the math. A 60-lb dog drinks ~half a gallon a day and shelters won't take animals without shot records. Pet items are P0.
5. Undersized inverters. Nameplate watts ≠ surge. A fridge drawing 150 W running needs ~525 W for compressor start; peak-line sizing in power accounts for it, cheap listings don't.
6. Storing water you never rotate. Tap-water containers: refresh 6-12 months; keep bleach FRESH (it loses potency) and dated.
7. Evacuating "to ride it out one more time." If you're in an evacuation/surge zone and officials say go — GO. Every hurricane after-action report says the same thing: the people who died mostly could have left.
8. Tape on windows. Does nothing. Measured, cut, labeled plywood or tested film — installed at T-24h, not during the storm.

Verification Checklist

• python3 scripts/test_storm_ready.py → ALL TESTS PASSED (35 assertions)
• python3 scripts/storm_ready.py example renders audit + water + power + timeline
• Profile set with correct region, people, and pets
• audit P0 gap list is empty before storm season starts
• Water/food stored to the computed numbers, dated for rotation
• Everyone in the household knows shutoffs, safe room, and meeting point