Things to do when bad storms coming

[Tradd]

How common is it for everyone to lose power during storms? I realize that I have lived my whole life in big cities and in many places have had buried power lines which are generally more reliable, but I could be a quadruple amputee and still have enough toes and fingers to count the number of times the power has been out longer than a few minutes due to weather.

Storms are getting worse with climate change. I’ve had no power for a few hours at a time. The thing is you don’t know when you will or won’t lose power. We had an evening of 10-12 tornadoes at the end of FEBRUARY in the Chicago area. Not normal. I had all my stuff together and spent the evening in the bathroom. There was one a couple of miles from me.

[catherine]

Storms are getting worse with climate change.

Yes.Vermont weather is totally off-course. Our growing hardiness rating has evolved a half-zone. The floods we had in July 2023 submerged the entire state capital region.

[ToomuchStuff]

How common is it for everyone to lose power during storms? I realize that I have lived my whole life in big cities and in many places have had buried power lines which are generally more reliable, but I could be a quadruple amputee and still have enough toes and fingers to count the number of times the power has been out longer than a few minutes due to weather.

At the old place, all my power and most of the power around were still above ground lines. They started putting things underground but wouldn't in my case due to neighbors tree, then shared driveway and concrete stairs. Snow storms you could lose power for four hours or so at a time, and I tried to be at work during them. Ice storms, which are around every 20 years, much longer.

Where I am living now, in three years, I have lost power three times, once due to a car accident that took out power to a good size area. Most haven't been more then four hours, and this house is better insulated.

[jp1]

The one big outage I ever suffered was nyc 20 years ago. When half the east coast was out. I’ve mentioned before making a hack jackery out of concern for forced outages during wildfire season but in 3.5 years of living in our house the only time I’ve needed/useful it was when our contractor was doing electric work. Which has been useful but also planned.

Interesting to hear other people’s stories.

[hana]

In the past 20 years there has been a ton of development without the promised infrastructure improvements for the larger population's needs.

Had lots of blinks and outages that last a few hours. Elections happened and we have the much needed infrastructure improvements in progress now that we're moved from working class immigrants and a scattering of federal employees to early gentrification probably helped.

Longest I was without power was in the early 90s during an ice storm, no electricity for a week. The school was unaffected so I had to go. Did homework by lamplight like it was Little House on the Prairie. Was stationed in a small town that was last on the proprieties of the power company.

[nswef]

In 50 years in this house built in 1962, we've been out of power for 18 hours once in 93 after a blizzard in March. Other than that the longest might be several hours. We are rural, so the outage affects the well pump which is my main worry- toilet and water- I feel very fortunate. I do not think the power companies are spending enough time on building the infrastructure. Our county has gone from 100,000 to about 250, 000 and nearly all the houses are HUGE using way too much electricity. Now the county wants to let Data Centers come with NO rules and the use of power and water for them is gigantic.

[Tradd]

I’m done with candles. Since we have such good LED lanterns now, they’re not needed.

[catherine]

I’m done with candles. Since we have such good LED lanterns now, they’re not needed.

Good point. We have LED lanterns, too, but I like the ambience of a candlelit room, so I'll still probably use them in outages. I consider them a "must have" and when I run low on votives, I reorder a case of 72.

[saguaro]

I’m done with candles. Since we have such good LED lanterns now, they’re not needed.

We have LED lanterns plus some battery operated string lights that I can move around and they have a nice effect which might cheer me up when I get grumpy over the outage.

Another thing I did was install battery operated puck lights under my kitchen cabinets so I can see the kitchen counters while whipping up something from my non perishable food stash.

Where we live we haven't experienced that many outages and most haven't been that long. Think the longest we had was 8 hours after some really rough storms a few years ago.

[Tybee]

We lose power a lot here. The worst was last year at Christmas when we were out for 5 days. Luckily we have a woodstove. We have a well pump so no running water and no furnace. Just the woodstove.
We are looking at a big storm Thursday supposed to get 22 inches and more power outages. I am praying that the weather stays warm and we get rain. My plan B is to lie in the bed near the woodstove and refuse to get out except to make coffee and pancakes on the woodstove. We play a lot of Scrabble when the power is out. Once I learned I could make food on the woodstove, I felt less stressed. We also just bought a little grill and charcoal so we can cook in the summer without power. Having warm food helps immensely.

We do a mix of candles, oil lamp, and battery lamp.