You can see this one coming.

The forecast is in. What kills people in an El Niño is the gap between the forecast and the action: the warning that never arrived, the money that came after, the plan that stayed in the drawer. Here is what to do with the forecast, at whatever scale you can reach.

Three things anyone can do this week.

01

Learn what this El Niño means where you live.

El Niño shifts rain and heat differently in every region: drought here, floods there, a hotter summer almost everywhere. Read the plain-language forecast for your part of the world before deciding what to prepare for.

NOAA ENSO blog ↗

02

Get warnings onto every phone in the house.

Turn on emergency alerts, sign up for your city or county's alert system, and follow your national weather service. A warning that reaches one person in a household reaches the household.

Ready.gov: alerts and warnings ↗

03

Cover three days without power or tap water.

Floods, heat waves and storms all tend to knock out the same two things. Put water, food, medicine, a battery radio and phone power somewhere you can reach in the dark. Do it once and every hazard on the list gets easier.

Ready.gov: build a kit ↗

We're building a tool that tells you what to do where you live, and keeps you posted as the forecast changes.

Type in your city, get the actions that matter there, for your family, your community, and your country. Sign up and we'll tell you the moment it's ready.

Did we miss something?

An action that worked, an article worth reading, a project you're leading in your town. Send it and it goes on the list.