system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 everyone knows there’s a hurricane coming when Jim Cantore shows up in your city. But how did people brace for hurricanes before the Weather Channel and modern day hurricane prediction methods?
gpt
Hurricanes start forming pretty far out in the Atlantic Ocean.  Ships would encounter the early storms and then report on them when they returned to port.   This caused the news about the formation of a storm, as well as its progress, to spread pretty rapidly throughout the Caribbean.  As you get closer to the year 1900, telegraph and radio stations were also setup to make this process faster.

Hurricanes also follow a predictable path in which they pass over the islands of the South Eastern Caribbean, then head west to Cuba, then either head north to the US or further west to Mexico.  When they first pass over the South Eastern Caribbean they aren't very strong and the gradually gain in strength as they progress.  

This means that the areas that are most likely to be hit by them when they're at full strength are also the areas that get the most warning.  Conversely, they're usually not that powerful when they hit the areas that don't get much warning.