First and foremost, how far up north do you live? If you live up in, say, Dallas, you won't have much to worry about. It probably won't even be a hurricane by the time it gets to you. I'm guessing you've never been through one before? I live in San Jacinto County, about 60 miles north of Houston. I'll probably see lots of intense, strong wind and rain, but other than that, I'm not worried about flooding or anything. I'll probably end up with branches and/or trees in the yard.
If you live farther up than me, you probably won't see anything more than me. Chances are the lights will go out at some point, but crews are already standing by for this sort of thing, and they usually can have the lights back on in a day or two if there wasn't too much wind damage. The water will depend on if your city or whoever has back-up generator and they don't loan them out (like our stupid city did
). Most places have a back-up plan for that, but just to be prepared, fill up your bathtub with water so you can flush the toilet, and stock up on fresh water to drink and cook with. Filling up any extra buckets and storing them where you can get to them helps too for watering the dogs or cats and the toilet.
You should also have some non-perishable food items in case power goes out. The general rule is to have at least three days worth. Some people stock up on ice in their deep freeze and keep a cooler nearby to keep things like sandwich fixings in it.
Back up power source: There are adapters you can buy to use in your car, or you can get a small gas powered generator. After Hurricane Rita, we bought a small one that we can run a small A/C, our deep freeze, a TV, and a lamp off of-- just enough for us to live out of one room. It's better than 4 days without electricity, trust me! Also...they don't call them hurricane lamps for nothing. Oil lamps come in pretty handy when in other parts of the house, but tend to put off a lot of heat.
If you have a barn or a shed, I would recommend putting any chicks you have in there in carriers, cages, or whatever is useful for containing them until the worst passes. Put the chickens in their coop (if you have one) and secure the door, but if you don't, don't worry too much about them. Mine had minimal shelter during Rita and did just fine, even though I had small trees leaning over from all the wind.
Tornados...just a fact of life in these parts, and they normally come with a hurricane, so all I can suggest is that if you live in a mobile home, stay with someone who isn't living in one. They're normally worse when the storm first hits, so by the time you see it, it won't be nearly as intense.
