From someone who has lived through several hurricanes and tropical storms, I have some things that are important.

1) Don't panic. They're huge, dangerous nature events, but they're not apocalypses.
2) Be prepared. If you're in an area that gets heavy storms like this, make sure you have water, food, and a way to stay warm. A small generator isn't a bad thing to have. Even the tiny cheap ones will work quite well at keeping some incandescent lights going (not LED or fluorescent, they're not reliable under generator current), as well as running your refrigerator. Cheap generators don't have good inverted current, so they're best for motors and incandescents. With a decent inverter/line conditioner (not a UPS inverter, but a straight inverter), you can use it to recharge batteries for phones and portable devices. You can also drive a car battery charger, which can then be used through 12 volt adapters for devices if you're careful.
3) If you have a heavy storm coming for you, make your choice. Evacuate, or stay put. If you're going to stay put, make sure you have alternate places to move in case something happens (like a tree falls on your house). That can be a neighbor, local shelter, or RV or similar. If you think you'll need to evacuate, make sure you have a list of places where you can go. Do NOT try to stay at the first place you think will be a good stopping point. That's where the people panicking will pack into. You need to be at LEAST four hours inland before you'll be in an area that won't be pounded by a hurricane/tropical storm. For example, Harvey flooded people all the way into northern Louisiana.
4) If you keep fuel on hand (not a bad idea), use stabilizer, and change it every three to six months. The modern fuel additives, especially alcohol, mean that gas goes bad pretty quickly unless completely sealed away from the air. They make pure gasoline you can buy in smaller cans for emergency storage, but they're expensive per gallon. If you're like me and have 20 gallons of fuel storage available, that's too much money to spend.
5) Make sure you're ready for power outages, and/or prolonged periods of being cut off. Some people go for guns and ammunition against looters, but mostly you just need candles, cards, maybe a small propane stove, oil lamps, matches (sealed), lighters, and tarps.

Just as an aside, we lost power for a while, and water pressure. For Ike, I put out three 30 gallon trash cans to catch roof runoff. I used that for washing and toilet flushing. Also, one use for a tarp is to hang up something to shower outside in the rain.