Household decision support
Use this assessment to organize hurricane watches, warnings, evacuation orders, surge exposure, housing vulnerability, pets, transport, and medical needs into a Monitor, Prepare, Act, or Leave planning level. Local officials always control evacuation orders.
This tool is a planning aid only. Evacuation orders and shelter rules come from local officials and weather.gov alerts.
Mandatory evacuation orders take precedence over the household score. Tornado warnings require immediate shelter; flood, storm surge, and hurricane warnings require prompt action specific to the warning. Follow the full official warning and local instructions when several hazards overlap.
| Situation | Level | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Mandatory evacuation order | Leave | Follow local evacuation instructions regardless of score. |
| Tornado, flood, surge, or hurricane warning | Act | Take the protective action required for that hazard. |
| Watch, or household score 2-3 | Prepare | Prepare transport, supplies, and a destination. |
| Household score 4+ | Act | Arrange assistance early; the score alone is not an evacuation order. |
| No official alert and household score 0-1 | Monitor | Keep checking official alerts; this is not an all-clear. |
A watch means hurricane conditions are possible. Evacuate during a watch if your local officials tell you to leave, you live in a surge zone, or your household needs extra travel time for medical, mobility, pet, or transportation reasons.
The safest decision is the one that follows local emergency management orders early enough for your household to travel before roads, fuel, shelters, or medical support become limited.
Check your official local warning first, compare it with the current NHC storm position, then decide whether your home, route, or medical needs require earlier action than the county deadline.
NHC advisories usually update on a cycle set by the storm situation, while NWS alerts can change at any time. HurricaneHub caches public feeds for short windows to reduce latency without hiding official updates.
No. HurricaneHub summarizes official data for decision support, but evacuation orders, shelter rules, road closures, and rescue instructions come from local emergency management and the National Weather Service.