Essential Tools to Ride Out a Winter Storm
To determine the essentials to have on hand in preparation for a snowstorm, Wirecutter senior staff writer Doug Mahoney spoke with meteorologist Brian Donegan, when Brian worked for The Weather Channel’s weather.com. Doug also relied on his own extensive experience with snow, having grown up in Vermont at the end of a 2-mile dirt road, where his family sometimes waited days for the town plow to make it to their home. He’s also spent forty-seven winters in New England, living near Boston during the winter of 2014–15, when the city received a record-breaking 110.6 inches of snow over a six-week period. In other words, Doug has dealt with all kinds of snow and experienced quite a few ice storms, two of which pulled the power lines right off his house and left him in the dark for a week each time. As the author of Wirecutter’s guides to snow shovels and snow blowers, he’s versed in the more technical elements of snow removal (he also assisted with ice-scraper testing). And he researched and wrote a guide to the best sleds, which he says is as fun as it sounds.
The biggest concern with a snow or ice storm is a power outage, because unless you have a wood stove, standby generator, or another backup option, that can mean a total loss of heat. That can be uncomfortable and potentially dangerous. And, as Donegan explained, “Your pipes can freeze, and you have a huge mess on your hands.” (Make that a costly mess.) We’ve got a section with tips on how to prevent frozen pipes, and a few of the items on our list will help, but there will be times when even the best efforts fall short. When you have no options for bringing heat into the house, you’ll likely want to shut off your water and drain your pipes. If you don’t know how to do that, this article from Benjamin Franklin Plumbing describes the process.
If ice scrapers and shovels are in your near future, we also suggest that you take a page from The Long Winter, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and check in with neighbors ahead of time to see who might need assistance. “There was a sense of community in sharing and recognizing who was in greatest need that I don’t know if we see as much in modern society,” said Barb Mayes Boustead, PhD, a meteorologist and author of Wilder Weather, a book about the historical weather conditions Ingalls Wilder wrote about.
We have a general guide to emergency preparedness, which covers items such as food, water, and first-aid kits, as well as recommendations focused on extended power outages. We highly recommend consulting those lists to make sure you have the essentials for your family during disasters. Consider this list to be an add-on to those basics, geared toward the specific needs of preparing for a snowstorm. We’ve also included a few extra suggestions to help you have a little fun along the way.
