FLORIDA POWER & LIGHTNING STRIKES

FLORIDA POWER & LIGHTNING STRIKES

The only constant in South Florida is the uncertainty of what afternoon weather will be like. With tropical weather, living at sea level, and a long hurricane season–Florida power outages are frequent and unexpected. Here are five of the best ways to be ready for the worst weather the sunshine state has to offer.

1. POWER DOWN EXTRA EQUIPMENT
   Severe weather warnings in FL are a sign to save your work frequently and to power down and unplug sensitive electrical equipment. Only recently being dethroned as the lightning capital of the world, Florida’s power outages from lightning strikes can ruin more than just your day. While lightning can directly affect the power in your building or house when it strikes nearby, the accompanying high wind and pouring rain are even more likely to knock out power at your site. Turning off non-essential electrical equipment when it is raining hard is a good place to start during bad weather.

2. INVEST IN BATTERIES
   It is a no brainer to have flashlights, AA batteries, extra charging bricks for your phones, and even backup generators to keep your home and household appliances fully powered up. The real hero move is to purchase and implement battery backups.

If your Comcast or AT&T modem has its power flicker at your home for even a second, that can mean several minutes of having no internet, TV, and other essential services in your home. While FPL works to get your power back on, having a battery backup protecting your modem and computers will reduce the impact of power surges during storms and extend the life of your connected electronics.

A battery backup is a power surge protector that can produce uninterrupted electricity to your connected equipment during short power outages. This will give you enough time to save your work and shut down your computer if you need to during a bad storm, even after the power is out.

3. LEAVE NO FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES
   Areas inside and outside your office or home may be prone to flooding. It is essential to identify these areas and make an effort to keep your electronics off the ground level. Wire ties, shelving, and wall mounting all can be great ideas to not only safeguard your equipment from water damage, but also to keep your equipment organized and safe from other incidents that may not be weather related.

Floprida Power & Lightning Strikes

4. FLORIDA POWER OUTAGES ARE NO MATCH FOR EXTERNAL BACKUPS
   We have seen hard drives affected by lightning storms more than anyone would like. Sometimes the added protection of surge protectors and battery backups are no match for bad lightning strikes. It is smart to play it safe by performing external backups to a designated backup device like a USB drive or in the cloud. This will ensure you have copies of your data easily accessible at all times. The 3-2-1 Rule is a good guideline for how to keep backups in the face of Florida power outages.

In addition to having backups, it is a good idea to have a failover in place. A lot of our clients will have Comcast as their main internet carrier and then will switch over to AT&T if there is ever an outage. When implementing a VoIP phone system for your business, this can reduce your downtime for calls during outages to zero!

5. STAY FLEXIBLE WITH REMOTE ACCESS
   While Floridians do not get snow days, we do have hurricane days. Power can be knocked out in some areas for weeks. Roads can be filled with debris. Having remote access to your work office can make dealing with driving through bad storms and their aftermath a non-issue. Having the flexibility to do office tasks from anywhere can make a beach day productive.

Big City Lightning

HIRE A PROFESSIONAL TO DEAL WITH YOUR FLORIDA POWER BLUES

Technology by Design has been helping customers with their IT needs in the South Florida area for nearly twenty years. We have seen firsthand how bad weather can potentially make big problems for our customers. All of our IT solutions come with disaster recovery in mind. Allow us to survey your site in order to keep it running safely. Find out more about Technology by Design, powered by RP Technology Services, HERE.