As you note, conditions vary from one part of the country to another. It is impossible for me to provide specific and detailed directions for your area -- I'm simply not familiar with all the unique characteristics there.

However, that is why the National Weather Service has over 100 forecast offices throughout the country. Each office is familiar with local conditions and provides forecasts and warnings that include safety information tailored to their area of responsibility. [For Web links to the National Weather Services offices throughout the country, you can check out http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hic/hydrolinks.html] In addition, the National Weather Service offices work closely with state and local emergency managers, who are responsible for making evacuation decisions.

So, when dangerous weather threatens, I urge you to follow National Weather Service forecasts and warnings closely so you can be prepared. If the situation is dangerous, both the Weather Service and local emergency managers will provide needed instructions over the radio and on TV. In the most extreme cases, the commercial radio and television stations will interrupt their programming to broadcast time-critical information, using the Emergency Alert System.

Both routine and emergency weather and hazards information is available 24-hours a day, seven days a week over the NOAA Weather Radio. For more information, use your Web browser and visit http://www.nws.noaa.gov/pa/secnews/nwr/nwrfaq.htm.

When all is said and done, the last, and ultimately most important thing you can do to protect yourself from severe weather is to simply act on the warnings. It is a sad fact that many people who die as a result of floods do so because they think "It can't happen to me!" It is true that there are any number of warning events that don't take lives. As a result, people can become jaded. While it is true that the odds of being killed are relatively low, acting prudently is really not that much of a burden and ensure that it doesn't happen to you.

Specific flood-related advice include:

• Don't drive or walk into areas covered by water. While the water may not appear deep, it may have washed out the road, and a car could be swept away in the unseen gully.
• Don't drive through flooded underpasses.
• Two feet of moving water is enough to engulf a typical car. As little as six inches of rapidly moving water can knock you over. Keep away and stay alive.
• Children shouldn't play along streams, culverts or drainage systems. Every year we receive reports of young children being killed as they were swept into storm drains as they played in the water. In other cases, people get too close to the edge of a stream bed and either fall in or the bank collapses under them.

Answers provided by Frank Richards, National Weather Service Hydrologic Information Center.