If a blizzard hit - how long could you last at home?

in the winter we'd be fine at least a month. Summer would be a different matter. In 2002 quite a few people went without power here for about 2 weeks....the fast food places made $$$$. we didn't have the woodstove then...just the fireplace and no wood. Now we have the stove, about 3 cords of wood, water stored, and the pantry and freezer are both well stocked. Now if I can just get a hand pump for the other well we'd be good to go! we have plenty of oil lamps and fuel for them too.

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Ginnie..
http://ginniequilts.blogspot.com/
You can say what you want about the South,
But you never hear of anyone retiring and moving North.

Hopefully till spring. I am still gathering "supplies" forr the winter.

Have enough food stocked for several months. Have some stored water but need to fill up the big jugs. We have a woodstove and enough wood to last the winter plus a generator and stored gasoline. If we knew we were in for a long power outage, rather than run both the refrigerator and freezer I would empty the frig and put things in coolers in the snow.

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"Never stop questioning - curiosity has its own reason for existence." Albert Einstein

"I used to be a terror, now I am a tired man" Jim Croce

Three months as long as we only used the generator to pump water for a short time each day. I don't think we keep enough fuel to run the generator for all day power for more than two weeks. I wish we had a manual water pump.

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Melissa
Reformed hoyden. Please forgive me if I relapse.

Easily til spring.

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Robin

I have enough for about two weeks (nothing fancy).If we are careful.Propane heaters so okay as long as the tank is kept full.Big diesl generator on the chicken houses which also runs my well pump.We are on the same electric line as the citys sewer pumping station so I am one of the first ones that they get back on.I did loose my freezer and everything in it to a freak lightning strike a bout a month ago.So meat would be a little slim (unless it is a good hunting season)Could always kill one of the 18000 chickens or eat eggs,eggs,eggs,....But here in NE GA we have had about a foot of snow just a few times .Only once that I can remember...You never know....

If a blizzard hit here in Northern Wisconsin, the worst case scenairio is it would take 48 hours for the county/local snow plowing crews to clear the roads.
Usually, roads are cleared & driveable in a matter of hours.

The worst snow problem I have ever witnessed took place in Milwaukee in 1979. 16" of snow fell on New Years Eve. Then approx 2 weeks later, another 18" fell. At the time I was living in the suburbs and they roads were plowed within hours.
However, the older parts of the city, where the streets were narrow, and thousands of people parked on the streets, was a mess. Snow plows had nowhere to put the snow. The television/radio stations stated that due to the snow emergency, all vehicles on east & north sides of the streets would have to be shoveled out or they would be towed. This led to bedlam. Towed cars numbered in the thousands. They ran out of room to store the towed cars and they eventually resorted to stacking the cars on top of each other 10 high in the parking lot of County Stadium. Thousands of cars eventually joined the "scrapyard".
Chicago encountered the same snowfalls in the winter of 79, but had far less snowplowing equipment, which resulted in even greater bedlam.


The plains of South/North Dakota have far more severe blizzards than anywhere. Blizzard preparation is an issue in those areas.

Not so in other snow areas. The Houghton area of Michigans upper peninsula receives over 200 inches of snow annually. Their streets are always driveable within hours of the biggest deluge of snow.

It all gets back to local conditions.

Currently have enough for one month, but given the state of things down here we are quickly building up to a six month reserve of things we can't grow or provide ourselves.
Our concern is mostly due to the extensive drought we have in Aust at the present, because even though our area has plenty of rain at present, (too much at times), most of the growing areas are a wipeout. Feed for stock is rather thin on the ground - literally - and the price of all produce is set to rise dramatically.

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BIDADISNDAT: Aiming to Live a Good Life of Near Self Sufficiency on a Permaculture Based Organic Home Farm

If our 3 families(my wife, kids and I, My brother, my parents) got together in one house we could last indefinately.

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Professional Tool. 1220 Woodmere Ave,Traverse City, MI. 49686. 231-941-8003. http://professionaltool.com/

We are stocking up and have canned meat, dry pasta beans in abundance. I think we would be OK until spring which is really cool because we are new to this. We have been storing water too in old sterilized milk jugs. Even have powdered milk on hand. No generator but a woodstove and wood burning range/stove, so no one would freeze!

Milk jugs are designed for one-time use and water should NOT be stored in them. The Food & Drug Administration and the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service have jointly shared information that reveals that proteins and lipids (fats) are retained in the biodegradable plastic of milk jugs, and are not washed out easily. The residual milk proteins and lipids easily contaminate water stored in the jugs and provide "food" for bacteria, algae, and other harmful organisms to grow.

We could go to spring easy. I never understand why people don't keep more than a few days food on hand.

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Ehh, whatever.

If we ever get a blizzard down here than I'll be convinced that Al Gore is right until then, let's just say that after Katrina we went over a month with no electricity and no generator and survived with no ill effects except that I lost about 20 pounds that I didn't need to start with. And that wasn't from lack of food, but because it was to freaking hot to eat.

I've still got a couple of boxes of those good old MRE's stashed. You can live a long time knowing you have MRE's to avoid eating.

I have about three months of food. I have gas heat and stove and hot water. If water was cut off in a blizzard, I guess we would be heating and purifying snow, which we can do b/c we are campers.

Cindyc.

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Mom to 5 cool kids and wife to 1 great guy. Life is good!

Yep, mail carriers are just that way. In 25 plus years I never missed reporting to the office because of bad weather. I didn't always make the complete route but I went in and did some of it. Twice during those years I had to go the the Postmasters house and bring him to work because of blizzards. Those times are when 4wd vehicles pay for themselves.

It's hard to enjoy a day off like that, you know what's going to be waiting for you the next day. Nothing like 2 days worth of mail to work in one. I totally understand him.

We'd last until spring. But I don't know what we'd do about our horses. They eat grain, and I don't have that stored, as I like it to be fresh. We usually buy their grain and hay monthly. I haven't figured out what to do about them yet. What does everyone else do about horses? No, I will not eat them.

katlupe

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Solar Baby
Reflections of katlupe

Glad someone understands. Sometimes I just don't get him. I have never met anybody with a stronger work ethic than my husband.

Now we DO have a 4WD - after that snowstorm he swore he'd never be trapped at home again. And we don't live on a cul-de-sac anymore; I'm fairly sure our road will be plowed as a 2nd priority since it's a "township highway" or some such thing.

We can make it through a blizzard no problem. Spring no problem and once the garden is planted (yep got seeds) I'm back into the rotation. Heck I don't make it to town for groceries but once a month as it is unless it's to the farmer's market just to see what's different. Got a good woodstove for heat and haven't used central heat in 2 years. We could use a good freeze! Cocoa anyone?

Thanks for the info- the water we are storing in the milk h=jugs would be for flushing, washing etc. Would it be ok to wash with if boiled first? We could always melt snow on the stove and filter it I guess. (we have about 12 jugs of spring water and add to it weekly too)

We could make it about a month. Of course, the last two weeks we'd be dipping into the canned collards, or spinach..... hmmmmmmm...... we could make it about two weeks!!

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Brad Bachelor
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"Loving an old bachelor is always a no-win situation, and you come to terms with that early on, or you go away.”
-- Jean Harris

We'd be fine until Spring, easy - except for the chickens and rabbits. I get feed for them weekly (chickens) or monthly (rabbits).

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Our homestead-in-the-making: Palazzo Rospo
Eating the dream