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In 2004 Hurricane Ivan knocked all the power out for nearly 2 weeks.

Not having power really gets old but there was never any worry about actual survival. My 85 year old Father lived only 5 miles away and I did worry about him. I would check in on him every day and I was surprised how well he did.

The main trouble was the heat. It could have been worse but in the middle of September it still gets really hot in the Florida Panhandle.

We were fortunate that some of the large stores (the Wal-Mart Supercenter) stayed open part time using generators. After a few days the government began handing out MREs but there were so many people waiting that I never did get any.

It sure was a relief when the power came back on but no one was dying.

On the other hand if power had been off permanently, it would have been much worse.

Kudos to you for taking care of your Dad in that situation.

And yes, after Ivan, it was muggy and hot as hell. I made it Georgia (where Ivan hit me as powerful Tropical Storm, lol). It was hot and muggy there as well, but we had power.

After Sandy, people in NJ and NY lost power for over a week. Sandy hit in mid-autum, and right after wards, the temperatures went into the mid 30s at night.

For those without power or a generator, it didn't become a quality of life situation not to have power. It became almost life threatening.

For this with generators, some people (like my cousin) quickly discovered that he never thought about how much gasoline he would need. He had some lawnmower gas on hand in 1 or 2 gallon cans, and that was about it. He went out looking for gasoline, and ran into lines that took 6 or 7 hours in order to get fuel. All of the approved gas canisters were sold out in a 200 mile radius.

His "plan" was to siphon out gas from his automobiles, but he found out the siphon would not work on modern cars. He said there was a bend in the line that made it impossible.

When you little kids are freezing, and all the hotels are booked, and you have no power, no hot water, or in the case of well systems - no water at all - things can get bad quickly.

If you do keep gas on hand, store it away from your house, and use fuel preservative.

The main trouble was the heat. It could have been worse but in the middle of September it still gets really hot in the Florida Panhandle.

Just something to kick around. If things hold together until next summer, I will be getting two of these for my home as part of the backup system. Each unit is a heat pump with roughly a ton of cooling or a ton of heating. Roughly.

This is from engineer775 Practical Preppers:

Solar AC Part3 ECO MODE (YouTube).

From the Practical Prepper website:

Air Conditioning.

I am looking at the off grid units, since I already have batteries and inverters.

Where I live it is pretty mild during the summer months, however the humidity will get you. I do have a very efficient central exhaust fan to cool the home and close up in the morning. These units will remove the humidity.

Hurricane Ivan also hit Alabama hard. Gulf Shores was essentially wiped out. I live just north of Tuscaloosa and we had hurricane force winds. We were out of power for several days and had limbs down everywhere. Luckily we had plenty of supplies because the local media stressed how bad it was going to be. We had it made, though, compared to the poor people on the Gulf.

We found out what “horrible” really was on April 27, 2011...