I always make it a point to evacuate for a hurricane if it's anywhere close. Even if it's not much of a damage or storm surge threat, I can't stand being in a house in the South without air conditioning. Call me chicken, but I'd rather flee to a nice air-conditioned hotel room and go shopping or take in a movie while my stubborn neighbors are sweltering or worse.
True story: My wife and I live along the Mississippi Gulf Coast near Biloxi. In 2004, we fled north to Meridian during Hurricane Ivan. When we got back to the Coast, our coworkers teased us because Ivan was a non-event here. (We actually had worse weather in Meridian--strong wind gusts, downed trees, etc.--as Ivan followed a path north and westward along U.S. Highway 45 from Mobile, Alabama.) The next year, we fled Hurricane Dennis. Same story. We were chumps. On Saturday, August, 27th, we were monitoring a Category 2 storm that was now headed in our direction. A coworker asked me if we were going to leave again. I said I wasn't sure, but that evening I made reservations to stay Monday evening at a hotel several hours north of us. When I woke up about 4:00 AM to check the progress of the storm, I learned the thing, which by that point was being called Katrina, was a Category 5 storm with 155 mph maximum sustained winds and was now expected to hit Monday morning instead of Monday evening. I moved our reservation up to Sunday and decided to head further inland and eastward, to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (My preference is always to go north, because people always evacuate eastward or westward in an effort to completely avoid bad weather. The problem with that plan is the roads come to a complete standstill. We blew north with no traffic while I-10 was at a complete stop when we fled that afternoon.)
While many of our friends and coworkers were battling to save themselves or their property, we took it all in on the Weather Channel and CNN from our hotel room. (Even though Tuscaloosa is four hours north of the Coast, there were still 24,000 homes without power in that area. We were at a major intersection along I-20 and never lost ours.)
The aftermath: When we finally got home the following Friday, our neighborhood looked like a war zone, even though we were about a mile inland. But, while there was a debris line from floodwaters about six feet from our home that completely encircled it, it sustained little damage. On the other hand, one coworker who called us "chicken" stayed for the storm until he was forced to flee as the water rose. In his haste to leave, he left his dog, a beautiful, friendly young Rottweiler, tied to a detached garage behind the home. When he and his wife came back to where their home had stood, there was literally nothing left of it. (Not even a slab, since it had been on a raised foundation.) Even his dog was washed away with it. Today, as in much of that neighborhood, nothing exists there except brush and weeds. But he and his wife were actually lucky. A personal friend of ours lost his life and has his name permanently engraved on the Katrina Memorial's marble slab located on the Biloxi Town Green.
Moral of the story: If you can possibly evacuate, do so. Staying simply isn't worth the risk to your life.
