I can't unsee business continuity or emergency management. It's always in the middle of my brain. As I watched the latest Batman movie in the theater, the end had me screaming "emergency management!!!" in my head, and that took over my excitement rather than whatever was driving the plot forward.
On brand with what I just wrote, I subscribe to a YouTube channel called Ryan Hall, Y'all. He is a professional weather analyst and storm chaser. He talks A LOT about weather patterns and what to expect.
The first tool I will recommend is subscribing to his channel. You, as a business owner (and homeowner), will be glad you did. La Nina and El Nino are things you might have heard of but can't say what they are beyond a weather-related thing. I was following the issues on the La Nina causing the atmospheric rivers dumping all the rain and snow out west...simultaneously erasing their drought issues and causing major flooding. Do you think that factored into what I was talking about for clients? It sure did!
If you had a few months lead time to know whether or not you'd have to content with severe storms, would that help you prepare for things? Following the weather patters can help with that. Of course, it's a predictor, not a certainty, but it's very helpful.
What about a radar app for when the storms are barreling into your area? Ryan Hall uses RadarOmega, which is has a time fee per device. I lived in Missouri for 3 years while stationed there in the military. I did not have a radar app (merely using the radar on the weather website), but I did have a weather radio...which blasts out alarms for imminent weather threats. It went off a few times for severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. Being able to monitor incoming storms or tornadoes with a good radar system will put you miles ahead of your competitors who do nothing. In natural disasters, you don't get much of a lead time (hurricanes offer the most); those seconds matter.
You may be thinking this seems more like emergency management than business continuity. But it's not - emergency management (EM) is the very first aspect of business continuity (there is a premium on saving lives first), and what is done for EM via risk assessment and mitigation will greatly impact your business' preparedness level. That, in turn, makes it more likely you can operate continuously that if you did nothing.
