Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for January 16, 2025

Arlo is wise man.

Could be weeks Janis

Go to bed to keep warm. Soup beforehand, followed by electric blankets help.

Go to a hotel. That’s always my back up plan. But I have 4 cats and I would never leave them. In 25 years of living in the woods the power has only stayed off for about 12 hours. Chill out Janis, you can always have a wine and cheese party.

Not a darn thing Janis

Give Janis a break. Ice storms that far south aren’t too common.

First, enjoy yourself while you have power. Make some soup. Make some popcorn. If you rely on electricity to pump your water, maybe fill up a bathtub with hot water. Check the batteries in your flashlights. Gather up some quilts and blankets and make yourself a nest. Then IF the power goes out, you can worry about it staying out.

Also, remember that sharing body heat works best skin-to-skin.

We live in ice-storm country. In the 50+ years we’ve been in this house, the power has only been out longer than 12 hours once. And, that was in mid-summer when it was 104° f. The 12 hour outages? Twice, during hurricanes.

Donner Party: Day One

Been there and done that, back in ’73 Atlanta had an ice storm, we were without power for about a week, fortunately we had a gas stove so we huddle around the stove with the oven door open, also had a gas heater in the basement. The worst part was that the neighbors behind had power most of the week.

Whenever a bad storm is predicted I prepare. Filling the tubs with water to flush the toilets ✓ Fill containers with drinking water ✓ Flashlights and batteries ✓ Propane for the grill ✓ Charge cell phones etc. ✓ Gas in cars ✓ One day my wife asked me: Why do you do all his stuff when we’ve never lost power for more than an hour? I shrugged and said: I was a boy scout. Then we had a really bad nor’easter and the power was out for almost 12 hours. During the outage she came up to me and gave me a big hug and said thank you. I asked what for and she said: because there was water to flush the toilet.

If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.

One winter we lost power for 5 days straight and it got very cold in the house. It was miserable. We could see our breath inside! It was so good when they finally fixed that outage and the heat and lights came on.

You can buy a generator.

You would think that a woman in her 60’s, with a life time of experience behind her, would not be rattled by a winter storm.

Humans have survived far longer without electricity and furnaces than they have with those conveniences. If you can’t figure out how to do it, well, let Darwin reign. Society will be better off for it.

fire up the generator, but make sure it’s sitting in the garage near an open bay door!

one emergency at a time, one foot in front of the other, one day at a time, live in the moment

Twice we had to go without power for 5 or more days. It’s not fun when all of your appliances and heat are electric. Luckily, we have a gas grille to cook with,

Apparently they have gas or propane for the stovetop.

Slip under the covers and use body friction to stay warm.

Janis, the time to “do” stuff in case there’s a bad storm coming through should be done before the skies open up and the rain/snow/sleet falls….but at least get some drinking water poured and set aside, even if you’re filling up various pots/pans and spare glasses.

Electric blanket when power out?

My gas furnace still requires electricity, so one fall I bought a ventless gas space heater called Mr Heater from Tractor Supply as an emergency reserve for an extended power failure. Less than a month later my furnace died, so I turned it on. It is thermostat controlled, does’t require electricity, (It does have a small fan, but it works just as well without it.) has no fumes or odor and kept my 2500 square foot house at a comfortable 70 degrees, and even kept the basement at 65. It did such a good job that I didn’t bother to replace the furnace until spring. Just to be safe I had also bought a carbon monoxide detector that also detects other harmful gases and mounted that in the same room, and it never indicated a problem.

Hint, hint, wink, wink, nudge, nudge Arlo. You’re usually quicker on the ball.

I cooked a pizza on the charcoal grill – also made toast on a stick in the fireplace. Both were very “Tasty”.

I have a coal stove and 2 solar generators. I hate winter.

Best thing I ever did was to buy a generator, power goes out, I fire up the generator, no more power outage

And this is why having a gas stove is important. No electricity, you can still eat.

In the event you lose power, don’t have a generator, but do have a gas stove, you can always heat the house by boiling water on top of the stove. I have done that several times and it can heat the abode up very nicely.

We finally bought a whole house generator.

Ah, yes, the Great Easter Ice Storm of ‘78! Power lines down all over the place. Our power was out for about 8 days, I think it was. Luckily, it wasn’t bitterly cold, but we still had hot water, so we would bundle up in the kitchen and fill tubs and buckets with hot water. We even were able to have a memorable Easter Dinner at my sister’s house, as she had a gas stove. One of the odd local stories was a poor dog, who was just taking a leak against a metal fence, got electrocuted because a downed power line was touching it. A neighbor down our street fought like a tiger to keep as many of his trees’ large branches as possible from cracking off. That was a sound that we would hear every so often, and it was loud. At one point, a friend and I drove around town, surveying the surreal “Apocalypse”…

Last summer after a tornado ran through our neighborhood, a tree across the street from our next door neighbor fell on our power line. Kohler ran for 63 hours. My neighbor said his generator was cheaper than the power company.

We have an oil-fired hot water furnace which uses little power and a portable generator that I can use to power it, the lights, and refrigerator. I don’t know how long 15 gallons of gas will last, though.

I am not worried if the power goes out, we have a whole house natural gas powered standby generator which works quite well summer or winter

Did I not say this yesterday?

I hate when we lose power in the winter. Our fireplace is basically like a picture of a fire and heats nothing, like the fireplaces in most modern homes. Last time we had an outage, we lost ten degrees in the house every hour. We ended up sleeping in the kitchen because it’s the only room without floor to ceiling windows so it held onto the heat a little longer.

I have never understood my wife’s obsession with worrying about what might happen. Fretting about “worst possible scenarios” has always seemed counterproductive to me.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. Or something like that. :-)

If you were wise, you gassed up the car before the storm hit.

If the power is out for days, you drain all the pipes in the house to prevent freezing, then head for the coast to see the kids.

A couple of years ago my wife and I moved into a new neighborhood. I commented to a neighbor that it was nice to have all the electrical lines running into the houses in the neighborhood under ground so that an ice storm could not take them out. “Other than appearances, it does not make any difference” he said, “All the lines leading up to this neighborhood are above ground. If they are down then we are not going to get any juice anyway.”

I’ve never had a gas stove, so my first thought was “make coffee on the stove? But the power is out” … pause … “Oh”

This is when people stop laughing at Preppers!

We have a generator (mostly go keep the refrigerators and heaters going), grill and gas ready, enough stored gas to run the generator for a month, and of course we also have our motorhome stocked and ready to roll, which also has heat, refrigerator and generator.