The other season — hurricane — has arrived; being prepared is key
If you've lived in Florida for any length of time, no explanation is needed.
If you're a recent arrival, it marks the beginning of the six-month Atlantic hurricane season that runs through Nov. 30.
That means it's time to stock up on supplies such as water, shelf-stable foods and batteries; to make sure the generator is ready to go in the event of a power failure; and to finalize evacuation plans for your family, including any pets, if the town is in the path of a storm.
It's also good to store important papers in waterproof and even fireproof containers.
NOAA's prediction of 13 to 19 named storms, including six to 10 hurricanes — and three to five major hurricanes — follows others this spring that have measured the Atlantic basin's stew of ingredients and influential climate patterns to determine that the six-month season will be more active than average.
More: With a busy hurricane season expected, Palm Beach encourages residents to prepare early
Of note, according to reporting by Kimberly Miller of The Palm Beach Post, is a forecasting challenge this year. The atmosphere is idling in a climate purgatory between El Niño, characterized by abnormally warm water in the Equatorial Pacific, and La Niña, cooler than average water in that area. The former typically points to a less-active season, while the latter can mean a more-active season.
Although the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration has had major staff cuts under President Donald Trump's plan to trim the federal government, an official at the agency said the National Hurricane Center is fully staffed, Ms. Miller reported.
That's not the case for many of the nation's 120 local weather-forecasting offices where employees were let go, balloon launches have been reduced and vacancies are unfilled, Ms. Miller noted.
While Palm Beach County has been mostly spared from major hurricanes since the mean season of 2004, we have seen some storms skate by that cause destruction elsewhere. And even when that's been the case, the effects here were not always minor. Take last year, when tornadoes spawned by Hurricane Milton left a swath of destruction from Wellington north to Jupiter.
Thankfully, no lives were lost, but the memory of those tornadoes serves as a reminder that one never knows what will happen during hurricane season. Milton, a Category 5 storm, made landfall in Siesta Key off Sarasota and went on to cause major damage across Central Florida.
Palm Beach lies in Evacuation Zone B, which includes most of the county's barrier islands east of the Intracoastal Waterway. It and Zone A, which includes mobile homes and low-lying areas, are typically the first neighborhoods to be evacuated when a major storm approaches.
Condominium residents need to remember that a state law allows associations to shut off power, elevators, water and sewer once an evacuation order has been issued. Residents cannot be forced to leave their homes, but who would want to stay without those services? Residents who chose to remain in their condos for the storm do so at their own risk because fire-rescue and police might not respond if conditions have deteriorated.
Some condo residents who chose to stay during Hurricane Dorian in 2019 felt the inconvenience of remaining in their homes under those circumstances.
One important thing that residents and workers on the island should remember is that they need to be on an official re-entry list, because police usually restrict access to the island during and after a storm.
Applicants must have a government-issued I.D. to be placed on the re-entry list, which expires Dec. 31, 2026. To complete an application, visit the town's website. We also encourage residents who haven't already done so to sign up for town alerts while they're on the website.
We love living in the Sunshine State, but a cost of that joy is navigating hurricane season. The experts will make their best guesses, and the science has helped to improve the accuracy of their predictions, but the key thing to bear in mind is preparedness.
Storms can change directions quickly — or intensify rapidly. Everyone must have a hurricane plan and keep an eye on the weather forecast once a storm is on the horizon.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Preparedness is critical now that hurricane season is here | Editorial
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Wall Street Journal
5 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
Vinay Prasad Is a Bernie Sanders Acolyte in MAHA Drag
Meet Vinay Prasad, a young disciple of Bernie Sanders who ranks as one of the most powerful officials in the federal government. He determines whether patients get access to many life-saving medicines. Or not. Think of him as a one-man death panel. Dr. Prasad was named by Marty Makary, the Food and Drug Administration commissioner, as head of the agency's biologics division in May, and last month as its chief medical and scientific officer. More on why he was tapped to these posts later. But it isn't an exaggeration to say that Dr. Prasad wields more power than Anthony Fauci ever did at the National Institutes of Health.
Forbes
35 minutes ago
- Forbes
Millions Of Managers Are Becoming Obsolete—By Solving The Wrong Problem
Psychological safety, problems at work, mistake, fatigue, dismissal, stress and overwork. Two months ago, Harvard Business School professor Amy C. Edmondson and associate professor Michaela J. Kerrissey wrote an eloquent article in the May-June issue of Harvard Business Review., 'What People Get Wrong About Psychological Safety.' A Massive Effort To Enhance Psychological Safety With Little Effect 'Psychological safety' was once an obscure term in psychology and management research. Professor Edmondson changed all that with her best-selling book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (2017) HBRP. According to her recent article, 'Today the concept is downright popular. Countless managers, consultants, and training companies have worked hard to create psychologically safe workplaces, and thousands of articles have been devoted to the topic.' In 2017, the need for the effort was obvious: 'A 2017 Gallup poll found that only 3 in 10 employees strongly agree with the statement that their opinions count at work.' Yet today, 8 years later, those Gallup numbers have hardly budged. What went wrong? According to the 2025 article, 'As the popularity of psychological safety has grown, so too have misconceptions about it.' The authors identify six common misperceptions: 'Psychological safety means being nice; it means getting your way; it means job security; it requires a trade-off with performance; it's a policy; and it requires a top-down approach.' They explain why each misperception gets in the way and give advice on how to counter it. The Key Problem: What Is The Problem? What is the problem that this massive effort is trying to solve? One useful insight sometimes (unreliably) attributed to Albert Einstein is to rethink fundamentals. 'If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend the first 55 minutes defining the problem and the last five minutes solving it." The effort on psychological safety may be doing the opposite. Thus, a closer look at the lack of progress on enhancing psychological safety points to another possible cause: a focus of the effort on the team level of the firm. As Professor Edmondson's 2017 book stated, 'My field-based research has primarily focused on groups and teams, because that's how most work gets done.' So too, the 2025 article focuses almost exclusively on leaders trying to enhance psychological safety at the team level. The team level may be where most of the work gets done, but not necessarily where most of the problems are caused. The Real Problem Behind Lack Of Psychological Safety Guess what? In many other aspects of management, the principal problem today is not at the team level, and rather in the way the whole organization is run. For the last half-century, the central problem addressed by management was how to cut costs so as to maximize shareholder value and enhance bonuses for the executives. That was the official position of the U.S. Business Roundtable for several decades. Business schools still teach it. Most of the processes, systems, and mindsets that support it are still in place in many big firms. So that is the problem that managers are required to address, whether they agree with it or not. Is it any wonder that there is a lack of psychological safety in such settings? The Shift From Cutting Costs To Creating Value For Customers The good news is that in a smaller group of public firms—perhaps 20% of public companies-- the primary dynamic of a business has shifted from cutting costs and extracting value to creating more value for customers. Value-creating enterprises emerged from the combination of two elements: first, entrepreneurs began using digital technology and AI to deliver exponentially more value than traditionally-managed firms; and second, digital technology gave customers the power to demand more value from businesses. The killer insight: value-creating enterprises not only satisfy customers: they make much more money than firms focused on making money. Workplaces devoted to creating value for customers are also likely to be more congenial as workplaces than those focused on extracting value from customers and boosting executive bonuses. Meanwhile, profit-seeking firms that still focus primarily on improving efficiency and cost-cutting are generating below-average value and are having difficulty in surviving. Two-thirds of the famous blue-chip firms in the Dow Jones Industrial Average are now performing below average (See the table below). The performance problems that these firms are facing of course aggravates even further the problem of workplace psychological safety, as workers in those firms are likely to be blamed for shortfalls in performance. Thus, many of the managers in struggling efforts to enhance psychological safety may be trying to solve the wrong problem. If they shifted the focus of their efforts to updating the goal of their firms and creating more value for their customers, their workplaces could transition from the dispiriting goal of extracting value from customers to the potentially inspiring purpose of creating value for them. And read also Why Millions Of Managers Are Becoming Obsolete—It's Not Rocket Science—Or AI Millions Of Managers Are Becoming Obsolete: Master Value Creation Now 5-Year Total Returns of firms in the Dow Jones Industrial Average as of July 2025
CBS News
35 minutes ago
- CBS News
Maryland Institute College of Art teams up with senior living center for art display
A unique partnership between the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and a senior living center is on display in Baltimore. MICA's community arts program agreed to lead art classes for the residents of the North Oaks Senior Living Community, with their artwork out for all visitors to admire at its Fred Lazarus Center. North Oaks is a multi-level retirement community that offers independent living, assisted living, skilled nursing, and rehabilitation. "When you have an opportunity to express yourself, you never know what's going to come out," said Susan Sidle, a North Oaks Senior Living Community resident. The exhibit will be on display through Sunday, August 3. Lorena Garcia, a MICA graduate student, taught the classes during her 2025 spring semester to more than 30 residents at North Oak. "Our goal was really not to just work one specific medium, such as just painting, but to explore collages, to explore clay, to explore jewelry making," Garcia said. According to research from the National Library of Medicine, creative activities like arts and crafts can promote healthy aging, even prolong someone's life. Research also shows that creating art can help improve small motor skills and boost self-confidence. "In the community arts program, we work with a variety of intergenerational populations throughout Baltimore city, providing art space and educational workshops for them and with them as well," said Unique Robinson, the director of community arts at MICA. "To make something that you're proud of, to discover a different aspect of yourself, I think is something is something at any age you can do," Garcia added. North Oaks Senior Living Community residents Jules and Susan Sidle aren't your typical artists or couple. For the Sidles and their friends, Gloria Greenspun and Nadine Goldman, art is timeless. As a matter of fact, they told WJZ most of them have never painted or had their work on display in an art exhibit before. "I had the best time and smiled and laughed and had a great time and learned something as well," Greenspun said. "I felt better about myself." The four residents who have known each other for decades decided the art class would be an enjoyable activity they could do together. "Everybody has a skill, you just have to use it," said Jules Sidle.
