Hunker-Down is a product of love. (We like explanations that start out with that explanation.) It’s true, too. Tiffowitz aka Tiffany aka Tiff-Tiff and Modern Family Man aka Joey are two great friends and Slytherins who share a love of cats, cheese, wine, Doctor Who, books and hurricanes. Perhaps “love of hurricanes” is less accurate than “an unbridled obsession with and passion for watching every tropical disturbance, every season, from formation on; watching every model, making our own predictions, and sharing storm updates with anyone that listens on social media and in person.” That’s a mouthful!

Tiff and Joey have bonded over friendship, wine, Zumba, and yoga. They’re two Floridians — one from the Atlantic Coast and one from the Gulf Coast — who have hunkered down and weathered multiple storms on their respective coasts. Together with our spouses, we run a Foodies page on social media and a book club in our homes. Tiff works in publishing and Joey works in the medical field.

The media can give so many conflicting reports on hurricanes that it can make your head spin. They may over offer a single view of disasters (New Orleans was not the only town with significant damage from Hurricane Katrina). They may cover storms in a way that seem to make light of the weather (like creating the phrase “super-storm” and naming snow storms). Sometimes the media simply doesn’t explain things or assumes people understand what’s going on.

The purpose of our site is to give you straightforward storm information that is accessible and easy to understand. We want to help you make sense of hurricanes and weather patterns. We want to be able to live-blog during storms so that you have the information you need in one place.

Eventually, we should have content that explains the spaghetti models, high-pressure systems, low-pressure systems, how hurricanes form and what causes them to strengthen and weaken. We also will try to provide updates on storms that we feel are worthy of watching.

Where are we? We both live in Central Florida, an area that once went over 40 years without a direct hit. Then, 2004 happened, and we suffered four direct hits in one hurricane season. Fast forward 13 years, and another destructive storm passed through and left 10 million people without power across the state.

Please keep in mind that we are not meteorologists (although we’d both go back to school for it tomorrow if we could). We only want to provide a good place where you can find a supplies list, get some handy and useful information, and maybe share in one of our weirder passions. We hope you find as much value and enjoyment in our site as we do!