Emergency decision tool
Generate a hurricane emergency kit checklist for your household size, including water, food, medicine, documents, power, hygiene, and pet supplies when needed.
Use the generator as a starting point, then move into local alerts, city trackers, the preparation timeline, and household planning tools before relying on any checklist for a real storm decision.
Decision note
Use this tool before watches become warnings. If your county issues an evacuation order, take the kit and leave before route options shrink.
For current storm conditions, pair this checklist with the live hurricane tracker, active NWS alerts, and official guidance from weather.gov.
Preparedness content cluster
The generator answers the kit-list question. These related pages answer timing, local risk, outage, communication, and city-context questions so the page is part of a stronger preparedness path.
Prepare workplace supplies, employee communication, records, remote work, and continuity actions.
Use the full guide when you want more context behind the generated kit list.
Connect checklist work to the 72, 48, and 24 hour preparedness windows.
Pair the kit with local alerts, location context, and a household action plan.
Add outage planning for communication, charging, food safety, and household continuity.
Turn checklist items into contacts, destinations, and household coordination notes.
Move from a general checklist to city-level hurricane context and official resource links.
A hurricane kit is the physical collection of water, food, medicine, light, charging, first aid, hygiene, documents, cash, and pet supplies. A preparedness checklist is broader: it also records alerts, evacuation triggers, destinations, contacts, transport, housing risks, and recovery steps.
Build both together. Supplies help you function; the checklist helps you decide when to stay, leave, communicate, and verify official instructions.
You normally do not need a separate tropical storm kit. Tropical storms can still produce flooding, tornadoes, dangerous surf, downed trees, and long outages, so use the same core kit and change the local action plan to match current NWS alerts.
Do not reduce preparation only because the system is below hurricane strength. Rainfall, surge, housing, medical needs, and road conditions may matter more than the wind label.
Follow product labels and local food- and water-safety notices. Ask a doctor or pharmacist how to protect temperature-sensitive medication.
Official context
This tool organizes preparedness work, but it does not replace official alerts, evacuation orders, medical advice, product manuals, insurance documents, or local emergency management instructions.
Use weather.gov for official watches, warnings, and local forecast office updates.
Use NHC products for official tropical cyclone advisories and forecast context.
Use federal preparedness guidance as a source for household readiness basics.
Next local step
After generating a kit list, use local pages to understand whether your location needs evacuation-zone checks, flood awareness, outage planning, or alert interpretation.
Put water, shelf-stable food, medications, first aid, flashlights, batteries, phone charging, hygiene supplies, cash, copies of important documents, and pet supplies when needed.
A kit is the physical supply set you can use at home or take during evacuation. A preparedness checklist also covers alerts, contacts, routes, documents, pets, medication planning, and decisions that supplies alone cannot solve.
Choose shelf-stable foods your household already eats, including no-cook options, and account for allergies, infants, older adults, pets, and medical diets. Follow product labels and official food-storage guidance.
Usually no. The same core water, food, medicine, light, power, document, hygiene, and communication supplies cover hurricanes and tropical storms; adjust the plan for the actual local alerts and expected outage or flood risk.
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.