I agree that there is less loss due to winter outages. At least the frozen food isn’t lost. We lost two freezers full. The third one is in the cooler basement and was stuffed full, and we didn’t open the lid on it, so we think it will be fine as re-frozen food. It sure hurts to lose that much meat, etc.
I normally get dry ice, like in the last outage here two years ago - but, this time, it happened on a Friday night, and the outage was effectively almost total.
The local shops that carry dry ice were almost totally without power and [thus] did not open on Saturday and those shops [farther away] that did open ran out quickly before I could reach them on Saturday morning.
Additionally, the dry ice manufacturing facilities were all out of power and could not make dry ice over the weekend. Stores ran out of regular ice early, but my freezer and refrigerator would hold for about 36 hours.
I went to Giant and Safeway on Saturday night figuring that they would be getting 5 am deliveries of ice on Sunday, but was told that it would not be there until late on Sunday. So, I went home.
On my way home, I noticed that my closest 7-11 [which had been out of power] was back up and running - and someone was carrying two 16-pounders of ice out of the store. So, I stopped. The delivery truck had just been there and the ice cooler was full. Got 80 lbs for about $20 for my 4 coolers - worked out great. Have power back now, lost only about $35 of food total.
Had tree damage that is being covered by homeowner's policy - but it also has a "food spoilage" rider. So, I am getting reimbursed for the lost food!
Careful what you wish for.
Here in the Midwest, we get more power outages from ice than wind. A few years ago, there was a massive storm that had people without power for months.
A lot of people got sick from trying to use a snowbank as a freezer. The food would get warm in the sun, and refreeze. Not to mention that no power or heat in sub zero conditions gets rather urgent if you have young children.
BTW, a lot of the local news crews and commentators are laughing at you guys. When we get outages, no one cares. When the power goes out on the East Coast for a few days, it becomes a massive front page event! But as my wife said, it may be because we have more storms, and have patterns of what to do. No one panics, and we all sit in the street drinking beer waiting for the power to come on!
Packing an unpowered freezer with ice, if no dry ice can be had, will help keep food from spoiling even if things like ice cream become unusable (I hear it’s good in coffee though as a creamer). And a tray of ice on the upper shelf makes the refrigerator into an ice box. Be sure the tray can hold the melt water and does not have a pin hole in it, or leave the ice in an intact bag to hold the water.