Surviving Winter Ice Stoms

Living in North Carolina, I have only had to deal with a single winter ice storm in all my years of existence. It was a terrible storm that destroyed several trees, bent the pine branches down and took out most of the power lines. I was a kid at the time, and where I was living we didn't even have firewood for the wood stove. It was a terrible debacle.

For those that live in colder climates, especially in Minnesota and that area or Alaska, how do you all prepare for winter and specifically these ice storms?

You really can't prepare for an ice storm very much. We've had several here. You can do generic planning of course like getting a generator or trimming trees back so they don't end up on the roof. If it's in the forecast you can protect your vehicles either by getting them indoors or under some type of cover. Getting in a vehicle that's been left outside can be a chore sometimes. The rubber gaskets around the door will freeze to the body of the vehicle. You can keep kitty litter or shop clean up in your vehicles but that's just part of winter preps. Travel should be avoided until the roads are clear. Be prepared to spend a day or two at home. Keep an eye on house gutters. Ice can build and take them off the house. If you have electric gutter heaters make sure they are turned on. If you don't have them then a sock filled with salt tossed in the high end of the gutter can help some. That will help keep a brine solution in the gutters and help melt the ice.

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It's best to hunker down during a ice storm and keep extra supplies on hand like firewood or kerosene.

it,8,degrees right now at 7,06 in the morning , got up at 6,30 and gnd the house was cold
got the wood stve going which tqakes a bit to heat the house. the bathroom thismorning felt like the back porch
almost.id put gloves on butthen i could,nt type.time to put some coffee on i think.im in mn near the SD border.
the weather people are saying -20 below by wed and it,s only the middle of november, this is going to be
a bad winter.normaly it dosent get that cold till late december mid-january.

As Rick said keep trees well trimmed. If you have a wood stove be sure you have some wood out of the weather to get a fire started if you lose power. Get a box of fat wood from Walmart or a couple of those log starters work well get your fire going nicely. Be sure you have a way to heat some canned food and also some water. Of course if they are calling for an ice storm be sure you fill your bathtub with water for flushing commode. Have other water either in pots or bottles for drinking and cooking.
If you do not have a way to heat your home without electricity get a small tent that is free standing and put it up in your house. Everyone's body heat will help to warm it up and make it a little more comfortable.

Get a single burner propane stove for about 20 bucks and invest in some one pound propane canisters to be able to heat water for warm drinks and you can heat up some canned soup.

Just pull out those camping supplies and make do the best you can. The good thing about ice storms is that it usually warms up a few days after one so the ice melts and you can get out if need be.

If you have little ones or elderly you may need to try to find a place to go to keep them warm until the electric gets back on. This is the reason you want to have an emergency cash fund available. How much is up to the individual but at least enough for a couple nights in a hotel and meals out.

Also be sure you have your gas tank on your automobile full when you hear the weather report calling for this type of weather. Be sure you have your cell phone charged and get one of the movie or other external battery packs for your cell phone. Be sure you keep your cell phone warm as in a pocket so it does not get too cold.

If you have a generator be sure it is in good working condition and you have fuel for it. Be sure you know what you can hook up to it and be sure it sits outside of your home and not right against your house. So be sure you have a heavy duty long extension cord to plug into generator and then plug appliances into cord.

Ice storms are far more of a hazard than snow storms. The weight of accumulating ice can bring down power lines, even with out trees and tree limbs falling on the lines. Restoring electric service can take many days , so having an alternate power source would be a high priority. Roads become virtually impassable, due to lack of traction. Chains help some but not so well for stopping. My action plan is just sit out the situation until power comes back and roads have been salted/sanded/ plowed or what ever they do in your area.

I have actually walked down a span knocking ice off the lines. The ice was so heavy the lines stretched until they were about 5 1/2 feet off the ground. Beat the ice off with a lineman's hammer and the lines went right back up once the weight was off them. Even I was amazed.

Thanks guys, this is not something I have to deal with often to really know about things. If anyone ever has a question about hurricanes prep or any common south eastern hazard, or a wilderness hazard I would be more then happy to repay the favor by answering questions about them.

So here's what I have for winter saved up. I have some money left over, and can buy more if necessary.

- All of my wilderness survival, hunting and camping gear
- 2 Generators with 25 gallons of gas
- 4 wheel drive 1994 Ford Bronco (351 Windsor Engine and Transmission rebuilt in 2010) w/good tires, snow chains, tool box and winch)
- Two entire oak trees cut as firewood
- 12 gallons of drinking water and 120 bottles of water
- 100 cans of food
- Winter Blankets
- Battery Operated Radio
- 2 Mobile phones (1 person, 1 business) with solar powered battery chargers)

Of course I have all the basic flashlights, batteries and general purpose stuff.

Need candles and beer.......and beer......might be a long pull....and beer.

Yep, we just hunker down and wait it out. Since I live in an arctic region, I generally have good tires and always have 4 wheel drive. Gravel trucks and snow plows are common here so it's normally just a day till the roads are driveable. Since I live in a waterless cabin, we haul all our own water so don't have to worry about not getting publicly supplied water. I always do make a water run before an expected event occurs. Since I'm still renting, we don't have a generator but will once I buy my own place.

Before I joined the Navy and was still living in a place where that white stuff falls from the sky there was a very serious ice storm. I was attending a community college which was closed due to the storm. However I needed to get to the campus to complete some work (I had keys to the building I needed to work in). Roads were treacherous. I laced up my skates and ice skated 6.5 miles to the campus. It was kind of fun skating down the middle of the road. Yes, weather was clear, but there were no cars on the road.

If you have your ginnys and you are running your TV then a few movies might be a good idea and games. It's really not so bad when all you have to do is sit back and enjoy just spending time together and wait for life to return to normal. Avoid using salt on your sidewalk or concrete driveway. Salt brine will cause the concrete to pit.

I thought it should be thrown out there, run those generators outside.

That's no joke. That ice storm we had a few years back, one of my co-workers almost gassed himself by putting the generator under the house eave to keep the rain off. Trouble was the exhaust went right up the attic vents and into the house.

We had power out for two weeks in that one and roads were impassible for 3 days. In the next town over the damage was so bad, they just bulldozed the whole mess, electric wires, poles, and tree branches out of the way and had to restring pretty much the whole town.
One important thing I learned, never trust the electric company telling you when the power will be back up. Ours didn't have an emergency plan capable of dealing with the scope of the disaster. They had no reciprocity in place. They had no damage triage teams. It finally ended up that a different electric company with linemen from as far away as Ohio got the power back. After they had finished with their own customers. I don't care what you say about National Grid, I'd buy those guys coffee any time.

Another thing about the electric company, they do not fix damage below their roof connection. If you have a stack, pole or line that runs from the connection to your house, and that is damaged, you need to call in an electrician right away to repair it or the line crew will pass you by. They won't connect you and getting them back can take forever.

Cell phone towers can be damaged. We lost one of ours and it's never been replaced. I get really terrible reception now with the cell.

Adventure Wolf, have you ever run your generator for a long period of time? Do you know how much gas it will use in 8 hours? Multiply that times 6 for 2 days.
How close is your nearest gas station? Does the gas station have a generator? Of all the stupid things I found out, none of the stations in the area had generators to run the pumps. Had to wait 3 days for roads to be cleared to get gas at a station 10 miles away that had power.

Secure your generators with chain and padlocks. They can become a commodity. There were thefts up and down the valley here after the storm. None were available in entire area for a radius of several states.

A chain saw is a valuable tool to have. With mix oil and chain oil.

Keep your refrigerator closed and your freezer covered with blankets and/or down comforter. If you think power is going to be down for several days, think about what you are going to do with the food about to spoil in your fridge. We had a big cookout after 5 days. The weather was too warm to keep stuff frozen the first week, then dropped below zero the second.

Get a GenTrans. Far more convenient (and safer) than running extension cords or backfeeding your house through an outlet (with the main shut off, I see Rick cringing.) Luckily I had one of those already set up.

Think about your heating system a little bit. I could run mine off a little 8000watt genny, though I couldn't run it higher than 45°, but had plenty of hot water because the tank runs off the boiler. If we'd had an electric water tank, there would have been no hot water. You do not know the meaning of "good hot shower" until you can't have one for several days.

Firewood is good if you have a woodstove. A fireplace isn't going to keep you too warm. We ended up sucking more cold air in than heating the place. So we had one of those oil radiator plug-in things that also ran off the genny and basically stayed in the one bedroom on the lee side of the house. I just got a fireplace insert last winter. Best investment ever. The fan doesn't work when the power goes out but those little heat activated ones circulate enough if needed.

When it got cold, we had blankets over all the big glass - the slider and the bay window - and over the doors. I stapled and taped plastic over the windows on the windward side of the house. I always keep a roll of heavy plastic in the garage attic. One of those 20' x 100 foot things. It has to be rotated out every 3 years or so if you don't use it or it gets brittle. Mine becomes cold frames then I bring it to work to be recycled.

We had a couple neighbors who have wells stop in for buckets of water for the toilets and to use the shower. We have town water that didn't stop running. They didn't want to use their drinking water to flush. The lake was already frozen over. I suppose they could have chopped a hole in it but I don't remember it being safe yet to walk on. If you have a well, getting a generator is a really good idea. The neighbors ended up at the shelter for most of the two weeks cuz they just weren't into it.

Have a plan to evacuate. A lot of my neighbors that stayed in the shelter didn't think to go back to their house and crack the faucets when the cold settled in. A LOT of burst pipes. I have to admit by day 13 I was pretty done with the sheltering in place. Was very glad to see those linemen show up.

The other thing is practice. My dad used to pick a weekend in summer (no stress then) and throw the house main for a weekend. Of course it was all planned so as not to lose any food, usually the same weekend was used to defrost the empty chest freezer, somewhere in June before the strawberry harvests, but at least it was practice.

I have multiple chainsaws and I know all about my generators, I've run them on construction sites long enough to know how they handle.

How come I never did any of those things? Wait..oh yeah..I live in Malaysia..no winter for me...hahahahaha

If you backfeed your generator the other precaution is to ensure what loads your ginny will run. Backfeeding will allow everything in the house access to the generator and you could overload it very easily. You would need to know which breakers, besides the mains, that you need to shut down in order to be "right sized" for your generator load.

My father rigged the circuit breaker box of his house to allow for back feeding (I have no idea how he did this). I don't feel comfortable doing this. He has a plug under his circuit breaker boxes. I will be over at his in a few hours, so I'll take some pictures and show you what I'm talking about.

I installed a generator transfer switch and wired only those things I wanted to run through the switch. I also hung a step by step instruction sheet on the power panel in case I wasn't home and my wife or someone else needed to fire it up.

Here in SD we get some pretty bad ice storms and blizzards. I don't have a genny, my preps involve having stored water, plenty of batteries for various lights and devices, a bunch of different types of fuel for various kinds of stoves (mostly LP gas, big bottles for gas grill and little green Coleman ones for the stoves, and a couple cases of butane cannisters that work with my Iwatani torch and single burner stove) and some canned and freeze dried foods that can be eaten cold or with minimal cooking. There isn't much practical way to heat my house without electricity- there's no wood stove, sadly. So I have a crapload of blankets, at least six Wiggy's sleeping bags, a lot of quilts and warm clothes.

Another big prep item in the winter is common sense! I try to never let the gas tank in my truck get much below 1/2. This is key in case I get stuck or have to deal with prolonged bad weather.

You don't have to be cold just because you have no wood stove. Look into kerosene and/or LP heaters. There are some excellent, no exhaust LP heaters on the market. They may not heat a whole house to 68F but they might keep you and your plumbing from freezing.

one needs multiple heat sources here in MN ,if you have elec heat which i do a ice storm
can take the power lines out ,no elec=no heat . i have a large wood cook stove to supplement
our elec heat . covering the windows with 3m,plastic helps quite a bit it really does.
freezing to death is no joke. I also have many comforters and thermal clothing which helps as well.
worst comes to worst cost rica baby where,s my mojito and beach towel.

It'll be a cold day in hades if I freeze to death.

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Originally Posted by randyt

It'll be a cold day in hades if I freeze to death.

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The only chance of that is if the MN, Vikings win the Super Bowl

Anything is possible LOL.

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Originally Posted by hunter63

The only chance of that is if the MN, Vikings win the Super Bowl

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Vi-queens.

A cold weather bag for the car is good to have. It could be a while before the tow truck arrives.

After that storm, I got an instant on generator with an auto transfer switch. That was another really good investment. Ran for 3 days after an October storm that took out all my trees.

Running generators on work sites intermittently is one thing but can they take the abuse of constant use over several days? My little Honda that I ran for a solid 2 weeks totally seized up when it finally got shut down when the power came on. I'm just lucky it didn't seize when I needed it. I got it fixed (rings and heads) and it's my backup, but I wouldn't ever trust it to have to run again for days at a time.

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Originally Posted by Rick

You don't have to be cold just because you have no wood stove. Look into kerosene and/or LP heaters. There are some excellent, no exhaust LP heaters on the market. They may not heat a whole house to 68F but they might keep you and your plumbing from freezing.

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Good point, I should look into that.

When an ice storm left my family without power for several days the biggest issue was not being able to charge our phones. We had plenty of water, fuel to heat the living room (central heat with natural gas does not work without electricity to blow it around), but fine in FP and space heaters. So we hiked to a McDonalds less than a mile away with an extension cord/power strip where there were dozens of other devices charging. So rather than go thru that again we got some high capacity external USB batteries. Something like a "Power Pot" with a USB charge port is also a good alternative to a solar panel when there is no sun, but this requires that you keep it full of water, and a camp stove. The big advantage of these over a gasoline generator is that they are very portable and you can take them in your car or even backpack or carry on luggage while traveling by air.

Someone makes a hand cranked charger for a cell phone.

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Originally Posted by randyt

Someone makes a hand cranked charger for a cell phone.

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About 10 years ago someone gave me an LED lantern with radio and phone charge port with hand crank. It is poor quality not very useful for phone charging but OK as a light and radio. Some other brands may be much better. Power pots are very problematic as well, they must be continually feed with snow or water and heated with fuel from below for 1-2 hours of phone charging time. Solar needs time in bright light and a lot of surface area or it can take many hours even days to charge a phone. As a kid we had a stationary bicycle charger, not very space efficient but functional, only way for us to communicate with civilization via SW radio while in the "bush" for months.

But for many people in the USA an UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) with deep cycle marine battery replacing the tiny one that comes with it and a power strip with USB charge ports is a workable solution. Just replace the battery about every 2 years. I write the date replaced on the battery so I have an idea when it needs to be replaced. This will not fit in my backpack but fits under a desk at home. I also had a large UPS catch on fire at work one time so these are always a concern to me, don't stack paper or "fuel" items around them. Lighting struck house still blew out bunch of stuff, even some ran thru PC and out bottom of my wife's heal, it was plugged into a UPS with surge suppression. Now she follows my advice and "floats" all devices during a thunderstorm on battery power only.

Anker batteries. They are the bees knees. They last for weeks on a single charge. You can buy them with a 2A USB that will cut your charge time almost in half. I carry one with me everywhere.

http://www.ianker.com/External-Batteries/category-c1-s1

$40 will get you one with 15000 mAh, which is the one I have.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...SIN=B00D5T3QK4

Rick - that is a lot of ZEROs :)

You can start your car and plug in the phone charger.
Just don't do it in the garage.
Car has a radio and heat too.

Oops. Nice catch. That one I use to jump start a 747. I fixed it.

No more current than a cell phone pulls you wouldn't even need to start the car.

We tend to have more ice than snow here in my area.
Canned food, bottled water, and a propane camp stove with extra canisters of fuel.
Charcoal for the grill.
Batteries for the flash lights and radio.
Meds stocked (for the wifey)
Dog food (don't want my pups to go hungry!)
I fill the tub up with water to flush the toilet with.
Make sure the LP tank is filled.
Candles and battery operated lanterns.
Games, books, or hobby related items.
I tend to hunker down as well. My family and I look at it as an indoor camping adventure!

Rick that Anker 15 Amp hour USB battery is a very useful device. My wife's parents purchased a similar 12 amp hour one (different brand) after our ice storm a few years ago. I mostly used it, for camping and airline travel etc. Finally the micro USB connector got pushed in and broke off of the PCB inside. I can probably open it up and re-solder it back on, but have not gotten around to it yet. These batteries typically only last 2-5 years anyway, but are well worth it. Some other brands for about $100 are more resistant to shock, water and freeze but the tiny electric connectors may be the weakest point.

When Ultra Light Backpacking I take 2 extra Batteries for a Samsung phone and remove the battery from the phone, but this is not an option for an iPhone. Extra batteries allow me to go for 2 weeks no problem, even with power hungry S4 or S5.

I am probably just paranoid but technically and legally it is possible for 3rd parties to remotely turn on the GPS "radios" of your phone without your phone's screen or LEDs going on, receive its location, store it in a server. Thus allowing some unmentionable GOV agency to then get a warrant to request your movements at a later date or in real time. I am personally not concerned about anyone tracking my location, this would only enhance my safety in the wilderness, but it does drain my phone's battery with no benefit to me. A little irritating.

They do make an external batter/charger for the iPhone. My wife has one.

You might have to turn the car on if that is the only way the power receptacle is activated. Like my truck...