My heart goes out to all who have suffered...
I live in an area that is frequently hit with tornados/ice storms.... have been without power many times and for about 10 days some years back during an ice storm.
You do learn to prepare a little after it hits home a couple times... Ive been hit 3 times with 3 foot diameter trees in my house, on top of my house.... etc.
Now I keep a coleman cook stove, coleman lantern (both old style that can burn coleman fuel or unleaded gas), a 20,000BTU wick style kerosene heater, hand crank radio and flashlight, a small 800w generator, chainsaws and an older cheap phone that gets all its power from the land line.
I cannot recommend
this little genny enough. It is just bearly big enough to run my fridge... so when needed I run the fridge for a few hours then swap out to the television/lights/UPS system (I have UPS system on aquarium filters that can run them for 8-10 hrs on a full charge I guess)
As Ron mentioned, generators are useless if you have no fuel.... in this case bigger is not better unless you've got the fuel to feed it.... think small, portable and economical.
This small generator can run for 8 hours or so (intermittent loading) on one gallon of 2 cycle mix... Anything bigger would be more fuel hungry and rarely be utilized at 100% loading; when fuel is difficult to buy, every gallon counts....
If you sign up on their mailing list and watch, it frequently goes on sale for 79 to 89$ with coupon.
Life is so much easier if your not cold nor hungry and a lttle radio or tele does wonders.
Good to hear our membership is all ok and damage was minimal.... I was wondering about ya Ron
Unfortunately, I believe that weather extremes are now the new norm...
(caveat, with small, economy generators... do not run delicate electronics at the same time as heavy loads such as a fridge. When the fridge compressor cycles off... the generator rpm will surge for just a moment and a voltage spike will occur. Run heavy loads by themselves...)