We missed a few key storm prep check-list items being civid-dough-brained. The simple things like get way ahead of laundry and dishwasher. We prepped lots of grains and bean salads and potato salad. Then the power went out with one dishwasher load half-way and another ready to go in.

The first sink hand washing was with grumbles and kicking, but not so bad with a system. The dishwasher is our 'dish rack' for the drip-dry.

We have a generator and a transfer switch. Lights, fridge, freezer, and minor things.

Cute new neighbors with young ones were panicked. We set up a charging station in our yard on a table near the street.

Last night DH ran a commercial long cable to their garage.

In our mailbox this morning...so cute

Internet is obviously down but I set up a personal 'hot spot' last winter when a storm hit. Necessary for work. So we are easily on-line. Zoom meetings, 🙄

Sounds like you are well prepared and experienced! Those are super cute notes.

I’ve never lived anywhere that gets significant power outages. In Portland we might lose power for a few hours or overnight every couple years in the winter, when a ice-felled tree takes down a power line. Flashlights, warm blankets and a cellphone hotspot are enough.

What we prepare for on the West Coast are earthquakes. You don’t bother with a generator for those, as power will be out for many weeks or months after “The Big One”. Just water, food, first aid, gas shutoff and assume the National Guard and FEMA will show up in a couple weeks. In case they don’t, there’s ammunition to consider :-) But quakes have to be really big for it to come to that. I’ve been in two “7” quakes and unless your particular building is damaged, it’s not a big deal.

In my part of town the hydro will go out if someone coughs or farts, but so far we've stayed lit. One other part of town was without power for a day, 4500 customers during a recent storm.

You've got all your bases covered, Sleeve and those thank-you notes are adorable!

Stay safe everyone.

I am wired for the whole most of house generator... I just need them to put it in. Not there yet.

Here in western MA, I was without power for 30 plus hours. I was okay but worried about two week old chicks who need a heat lamp. They huddled a lot around each other - you could almost see them trying to wrap wings around each other (but wings don't work that way). I brought them upstairs yesterday and put them in the sunlight coming in from the dining room door. This helped. they perked up happily.

I took nothing out of the fridge or freezers. Dinner last night was a humungous orange from Misfits Market. It was the size of a grapefruit. Almost as good. I did go into town for breakfast yesterday - the town below us. They had power.

Those notes are so sweet! I always save things like that that I receive. I especially like the "Thanck You" note. It looks like they love you!

The worst thing we've had this week was smoke pollution from the Apple Fire, but the air quality is back to normal today. Still, I will not be going back to the desert until next week.

They were forecasting 60mph winds for us and 2-4" of rain. The wind was never anything like that! We had a soft straight-down rain for most of the day and got 1.3" total.

And it wasn't even a hurricane....they say. I was without power for 8 days one winter from a horrible ice storm. Refrigeration wasn't a problem, staying warm was. Huddled at a neighbor's with a gas fireplace, who got power back days before I did.

Be safe.....this too shall pass.

My DS lives in Milford, CT and his power returned Thursday evening! It was off a little more than 2 days.

We turned off the sound to our phones. Power company text updates are hourly and annoying. Now saying 11pm tonight power restored.

After covid life, this has not been much of an issue at all. We are so fortunate to have a home and food, know how to make the best of it, good fresh foods, and know how to cook and bake.

Three days of chain saws has stopped for now. Just the hum of generators.

A helicopter, a fire siren, random. Birds and garden happy.

The Misfit giant ice packs came in handy. (I must have 30+ now) 😂

Freezing in rotation. Gave one neighbor one of our coolers with the ice packs on the bottom. Frozen foods on top of that, then instructed newspaper, then one ice pack and fridge foods on top of that. Works so well and their frozen prime foods are still frozen under all the insulation.

Fingers crossed for all involved that power will be restored tonight.

We’re one of about 10 houses in our little neighborhood that have power. Everyone else has generators running and I’m wondering how their electronics will hold out. My TV died shortly after Sandy, and I read that the electricity from contractor type generators is not “clean” and bad for electronics. I’ve since bought a small inverter generator, which should be good, and I imagine whole house take care of the issue.

Anyway my little one generator went to my parents’ house, they’re close to me but their area got hit harder and I don’t know how long they’ll be without. For now they’ve headed out East for a few days because apparently the Hamptons were spared.

Sleeve - Curious as to what the “personal hot spot” is? If you mean on the phone, does us no good as we have no service. (I’m down by the train station, can get LTE here and my wife’s been working in the car here as well.) If something other than phone I’m interested in what that is.

Power back on just an hour ago. Everything working. Dishwasher rebooted. All seems good.

FOAS, don't want to bother or contact my DIT friend. Expert in all things phone/computer. Are you in total dark. Black-out zone?

As I understand it, 'hot spots' are extenders to connections with little or no service. Then data links kick in. A variety of ways to connect but not my department. We used to have a tech room in the basement at work I called the 'f*rt box', 😂. (smelled of Doritos and fast food). Useless since they hated Apple/Mac. Replaced an entire department with one 'genius' that is upstairs with the rest of us.

So I can't help but must be a solution out there somewhere. I'll be re-connected with him in a few weeks.

This post also went into Lala land. I see it but not sure it posted for others.

Hot Spot: I'm not expert but mine works this way. On my iPhone under settings is an item called HOT SPOT. I have to turn that on. It acts as a transfer station to other devices that I want to use. They also have to be turned on the the Hot Spot setting. However, this uses a lot of energy and data-use from your phone (or other device... may be a tablet, pad or computer that has internet connection.) You will want to turn it off when not using "Hot Spot". to save engergy and data-allowance.

My iPad doesn't have internet access, so, when I travel, I use my phone's Hot Spot so I can connnect my iPad to the internet. I know it's going to use up my data allowance, and I'll have to buy more, but that's OK because it's only occasionally. At home I have WiFi and have phone and pad using that.

Hope this was a bit more "clear than mud" and that it helps.

Cable/internet back up. My parents are back home with no power. I’ll drop by and give my daily pitch to come here.

SD - Thanks I’ll try to research a bit.

CA Kate - Yes I’m familiar with the cell phone hot spots, but that doesn’t help us here because we don’t have cell data access at my house. Down the road at the tracks I get a reception (cellular not wifi), so that’s why we kept going down there.

Interestingly my wife recently got an iPad through work and that’s what she was using. It was set up as a copy of her phone so I’m assuming it’s using our cellular data, but it doesn’t show up on my plan. I didn’t realize you could do that.

Horrid for those still without power. Sad and devastating during all else going on. My new neighbors with their first home did not experience StormSandy like we did. So they were unprepared.

I think complacency set in and fingers crossed.

I think our power system did such a great job under the circumstances. Way too much criticism I feel. We all do need to do our part to help our neighbors.

I have worked in so many remote locations over the past 25 years. Some 'genius' on payroll always figures out how to get connections....but I don't pay for it.