Mind you, for all the hype, this is predicted to be a 1-day snow storm, and we’ve had enough big wind storms already this year that there won’t be a lot of fallen trees taking down power; it’ll mostly be idiots driving into transformers.

✔️ battery-powered emergency radio with hand crank

✔️ cooked food, canned food, freeze-dried camping food, emergency long-term food

✔️ potable water for several days

✔️ gas range; also camp stove and plenty of fuel (the outdoor gas grill would be challenging to use in the cold, but possible)

✔️ small pellet-burning grill and lots of fuel

✔️ gas water heater

✔️ gas fireplace that can be manually lit

✔️ blankets, hand-warmers, winter clothing

✔️ high-capacity UPS that can be used to power small appliances

✔️ fully-charged phone/tablet/chargers

✔️ fully-charged camera batteries that can be used to recharge phone

✔️ 2 cars with full tanks of gas, one of them garaged

✔️ pre-salted driveway and walk to help reduce accumulation

✔️ computer and Switch games if I have power

✔️ books if I don’t

✔️ pepper-ball guns, with fresh CO2 cartridges

✔️ actual guns, with fresh bullets

❌ seasonal service check for gas furnace

Oops.

Apparently the furnace stopped delivering heat on Friday, but between the thermal mass of the 2,500 square-foot basement and the big gaming PC making genai gals all night long, I didn’t notice until Saturday at 6pm.

At which point it was already 14°F outside and starting to snow.

I’ve got a call into my HVAC people, but I doubt they’ll be able to get to me until Monday, what with the 17+ inches of snow predicted over the next 24 hours.

So it’s 64°F in most rooms tonight, and 67°F in the kitchen and family room thanks to the gas fireplace. Which, sadly, is at one end of the 75-foot-long house. The furnace is at least able to blow air around, so the heat from the fireplace will keep it tolerable in the rest of the house.

Comments via Isso

Markdown formatting and simple HTML accepted.

Sometimes you have to double-click to enter text in the form (interaction between Isso and Bootstrap?). Tab is more reliable.