Tis the season to be worried, and here’s why: We’ve got less than two weeks until the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season opens, and already scientists from Florida to Colorado to Pennsylvania are predicting the worst.

Not just the worst season we’ve seen in a while. The worst ever.

The University of Pennsylvania’s newsletter describes what its climate scientists are anticipating: that there will be “a record-breaking 33 named storms for the 2024 North Atlantic hurricane season.” The publication adds, “It is the highest count ever projected.”

Colorado State University, which has predicting storm numbers and intensity for decades, has a more conservative estimate for the season, which begins June 1: Its scientists predict we’ll see 23 named storms, 11 of which will become hurricanes.

I’m already reminding myself not to panic. Because that’s the key to surviving hurricane season, not just on the Atlantic Coast but also along the Gulf of Mexico, where I live in southwest Alabama. In fact, that’s what I tell newcomers to the area who ask what it’s like to live through a hurricane.

The most important thing to do? Don’t panic.

Seriously. Breathe in, breathe out, and don’t lose your cool. Take some practical steps, like filling your cars with gas (or electricity, as the case may be), charging phones and tablets, making sure you’ve got a couple of cases of water and an assortment of non-perishable food, and withdrawing some cash from an ATM. Refilling prescriptions. Buying booze and cigarettes if you can’t live without those.

Especially, though, you must not panic. It doesn’t accomplish anything besides running up your blood pressure, and it can lead you to do dumb things that can cost you time and money.

For example, deciding at the last minute that you need to evacuate is a dumb thing. It means you haven’t got a plan, so you have no idea where you’re going. A friend’s house? A motel? In either case, they’ll need to know you’re coming.

You’ll need to decide ahead of time what you’ll do with your pets and property. And what about Grandma and Grandpa? Will it be harder on the old folks to stay in place or endure an eight-hour drive to Birmingham at 35 mph?

And don’t forget the other things that come with failing to plan, like empty shelves at Walmart and Lowe’s, and lines at gas stations that wrap around the block. The morning of the day the hurricane is due to make landfall is not the time to be looking for a generator — which, by the way, if you don’t know how to operate can kill your entire family, including you.

The really seasoned coastal residents are already thinking about getting some bottled water now, and they already know where they’ll go if they decide to leave. They also know that even though they’ve experience several hurricanes over the years, they do not know what the next storm will be like.

Mother Nature doesn’t care what you think you know about hurricanes. She knows that large or small, each one is unique.

After you’ve lived on or near the central Gulf Coast for a while, you’ll probably hear somebody say something like this about the devastation in south Mississippi after 2005′s Hurricane Katrina: You know what? Camille killed more people during Katrina than it did when it hit in 1969.

What they mean is, you can’t apply yesterday’s lessons to today’s hurricanes. Yes, Camille was a ferocious Category 5 hurricane when it struck Biloxi (55 years ago this August), but the coast was much less populated back then and, moreover, Camille didn’t kick up nearly the storm surge that Katrina did. However, many people who lived in the area in 1969 assumed that if their property wasn’t badly damaged back then, then there was no need to evacuate for Hurricane Katrina. So they didn’t.

Such miscalculations cost 238 Mississippians their lives in 2005, compared to the 143 people who were killed in Camille.

Therefore, in addition to refusing to panic when you hear that a hurricane is headed here, don’t make foolish assumptions and comparisons. They could end up being deadly.

Instead, do what emergency officials advise people to do, whether it’s to leave or shelter in place. And brace yourself for many days without electricity. If you live in the country, like we do, you also won’t have running water or flushing toilets.

But assuming you heeded officials’ advice and weren’t smacked by a falling tree or electrocuted by a downed wire, you’ll emerge on the other side of the storm a wiser, more seasoned coastal resident who has begun to learn how to deal with a hurricane.

And it all starts with two simple words: Don’t panic.

Frances Coleman is a former editorial page editor of the Mobile Press-Register. Email her at [email protected] and “like” her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/prfrances.