How to prepare for a winter storm

Winter storms are unusual among disasters in that the weather itself is rarely what harms people. The cold outside is survivable and well understood. What causes the deaths is what happens inside a cold house: an improvised heater, a generator in the wrong place, a driveway cleared too fast by someone whose heart was not up to it.

So the preparation is mostly about being able to stay warm for several days without burning anything indoors, and about the house surviving it too.

The three problems, in order

Problem	What it does	What prevents it
Losing heat	House drops below liveable in a day or two	One insulated room, layers, bags rated for cold
Carbon monoxide	Kills within hours, without warning	Never burn fuel indoors; battery CO alarm
Frozen pipes	Bursts flood the house when it thaws	Heat reaching the pipes, water moving, mains shutoff known

Before the season

Find your main water shutoff and test that it turns. Ten seconds of knowledge that saves a house.

Insulate the pipes that run through unheated space — crawl spaces, garages, exterior walls — and disconnect outside hoses before the first hard freeze. The full method.

Put a battery CO alarm on each sleeping floor and test it. Hardwired alarms stop when the power does.

Service the heating and clear the vents. Blocked flues are the other half of the carbon monoxide problem.

Stock for a week without shops or roads: water, food that needs no cooking, medication, formula, pet food, and the batteries.

Prepare one room — small, interior if possible, on a lower floor, with a door that closes. That is where the household lives if the heat fails.

When the power goes

1. Consolidate into the prepared room. Close doors to everywhere else, cover windows at night, block the gap under the door.
2. Dress in layers with a hat, including indoors and in bed. Most heat loss is a solved problem with wool and a closed door.
3. Eat and drink warm things. Hydration matters as much in cold as in heat, and it is easy to forget.
4. Keep pipes moving — a slow drip on the vulnerable runs — and if it gets very cold with no heat at all, shut the water off and drain the system.
5. Check the fridge rules, and use the outdoors as a cooler only in a sealed container. How to hold heat without power.

Ice storms are their own category

Freezing rain is the winter event that removes infrastructure rather than blocking it. A quarter-inch of ice brings down branches; half an inch brings down lines and poles, and restoration in those conditions runs for days or weeks.

• Assume a multi-day outage, not an evening one.
• Stay out from under loaded trees and lines, which fail without sound.
• Do not drive. Freezing rain removes traction completely, and salt stops working at low temperatures. Preparing for an ice storm.

On the road

• Do not travel during a warning unless there is no alternative.
• Keep the tank above half all season: fuel is heat if you get stuck.
• Carry the winter kit — blankets, water, food, light, shovel, sand, phone power.
• If you get stuck, stay with the vehicle, keep the exhaust pipe clear of snow, and run the engine only a few minutes at a time. Trapped in a vehicle.

The ZonaProtec monitor shows official winter storm watches and warnings in effect at a point you search, alongside the rest of the threats near you.