Here’s a quick no-brainer or two from your hurricane-prone pals at Android Central for those of you in the path of Hurricane Irene, scheduled to make landfall along the North Carolina coast on Saturday. (They’ll help you out for any natural disaster, though, from the recent east coast earthquakes to the next winter snowstorm, so keep ‘em handy!)

• Charge your iPhones, iPod touches and iPads. Now. Keep them charged. And once the storm starts, keep them off. You’ll likely lose power at some point, and there’s a good chance your local cell network will go down for a bit, even with generator backups.
• Spare batteries. You can’t swap iPhone or iPad batteries, but you can get external chargers and charging cases. If you got ‘em, make sure they’re charged, too. If you still have time to get some, do it.
• After the storm, SMS text messages work best. Any carrier will tell you this, and we saw it again with that little shake the mid-Atlantic states got on Tuesday. If the network’s up, it’s going to be clogged, and calls might not go through. Text messages have a much better chance. (If you’re on iOS 5, that means turn off iMessage — it uses data, not the SMS network.)
• If you’re worried about damage and don’t have a traditional camera, use your phone to take a few pictures of your home and your belongings. It’ll make insurance claims much easier, should it come to that.

Any tips you folks want to share? Let’s hear ‘em.

[More: Latest on Irene from the National Hurricane Center, Image: LSU Earth Scan Labratory]

Tips of the day will range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to dailytips@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward…)

(Hurricane for iPhone Forum Review by cjvitek For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!)

Hurricane [$3.99 - iTunes link] is a hurricane tracking app for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Back when I lived in Florida, hurricanes were a yearly concern. Now that I am in Texas, they don’t play such a prominent role but they are still something to think about. Hurricane is an app designed to try to take away some of that concern.

I have actually had this app for well over 4 months, but I wanted to wait till the middle of hurricane season so I could see it in action. And let me say, the app generally performs very well. The app starts off with a screen where you can select Atlantic or Pacific hurricanes, and then gives you a list of the active storms as well as completed storms. When you click on a storm, you can look at the radar loop, projected path, tracking map, satellite images, and bulletins. All of this allows you to try to keep on top of these potentially devastating storms.

In addition, you can look a historical storms (from last year going back to 1851) and specific data feeds (like satellite images) from a variety of sources. For people with little hurricane experience, you can also see how hurricanes are rated on the Saffir-Simpson scale. While it certainly isn’t necessary, it would be nice to have some sort of hurricane checklist included (what to do, or not do, when one hits, for example).

Unfortunately, the app doesn’t provide any customization options. You can specify your location and only look at storms that may hit you. You can’t mark a storm as a “favorite” to keep close tabs on it. You don’t get push notifications when a storm status changes (or a new alert is released). These are all kinds of features that would put this app into an elite category. In addition, there is no ability to sort or search the historical data. I can’t look for all historical Cat 5 storms that have him Florida, for example. If I am curious about how frequently a specific area has been hit, I can’t only include storm that hit Texas. The historical data is nice, but in the present form it is a little unwieldy unless you know exactly what you are looking for.

Conclusion

As hurricane tracking apps go, this is a nicely designed app, giving you a lot of the pertinent and critical information. If you live in a hurricane prone area, it could certainly be worth the $3.99 price. However, the app is missing some features that would move it into a premium app category (which, I should note, I haven’t seen in other hurricane apps as well).

(In the interest of full disclosure, I received a promo code for this app.)

Pros

• Up to date hurricane tracking and projections
• Detailed data regarding hurricanes
• Historical data included

Cons

• No to choose “favorites”
• No push notifications
• No location based data
• No search or sort feature for historical data

TiPb Review Rating