Checklist L1 · 72 hours Event · Winter storm & extended outage

Winter storm 72-hour checklist

The 72-hour winter-storm checklist for households on the front edge of a multi-day outage. Water, heat, light, and the calls you make before the first flake.

A winter storm 72-hour window is rarely about the storm itself — it is about the cold that follows the outage. The first three days decide whether your house holds heat, whether anyone in it gets hurt walking on ice, and whether you have to leave for a hotel you cannot get to. This list assumes the lights are about to go out, the temperature is about to drop, and the road is about to glaze over. It is not a pantry-stocking exercise. It is a do-this-before-the-snow-flies punch list, sequenced.

The load-bearing domains

What this combination actually depends on

Every event–duration combination weights the nine domains differently. Here are the two or three that decide the outcome for this one.

Power & Light

When the grid goes.

Outages in winter are heat outages. Light is secondary; preserving heat and charging comms is the work.

The power & light domain →

Shelter & Warmth

Roof, heat, dry.

A house that loses heat is a house with one warm room. Picking it and sealing it is a Day-1 task, not a Day-3 improvisation.

The shelter & warmth domain →

Water

Clean, store, source.

Frozen pipes are the cascade failure that turns a 72-hour outage into a 14-day repair. The shutoff valve is a household-readiness gate.

The water domain →

The 72 hours list

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Identify your warm room and seal itPick the interior room with the smallest footprint and the fewest exterior walls. Close the doors, hang blankets over them, and run the whole household through that room. Heating one room is a tractable problem; heating a house without power is not.
Know where your main water shutoff is — and confirm it turnsIf pipes freeze and burst, the difference between a 30-minute mop and a 30-thousand-dollar claim is one quarter-turn of a valve you found at 2am in the dark. Find it before the storm.
Drip every faucet on an exterior wallMoving water resists freezing. A pencil-thick drip in your kitchen and bathroom sinks costs $0.30 in water and avoids a burst supply line you cannot fix while the pipes are frozen.
Fill the bathtub and 3-gallon containersMains pressure can fail with the grid. Bathtub water is for flushing toilets. Sealed jugs are for drinking. Do this before the outage, not after.1 gal/person/day
Charge every battery, top off the gas tanksPhones, power banks, headlamps, the portable power station. Gas stations rely on the grid; a full tank gives you mobility and a way to charge a phone from the car.
A safe backup heat source — and a CO detectorIndoor kerosene heaters, propane heaters rated for indoor use, or a wood stove with seasoned wood. Whichever you have, the battery-powered CO detector is non-negotiable. Most winter-storm deaths are not from cold; they are from CO.
Rock salt or sand at every exterior doorIce on the steps is the single largest cause of injury in a winter storm. A 50-pound bag of sand or rock salt costs $8 and prevents the broken hip that turns the outage into a hospital trip you cannot drive to.
Headlamps, not just flashlights, one per personHands-free wins every time. Cooking in the dark, walking the dog in the dark, dealing with a child in the dark — all easier with both hands free. Spare AAA batteries in the same drawer.

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Common questions

Questions that come up

How long does it take a house to lose heat in a winter outage?

A well-insulated house in the 20s loses about 1°F per hour without heat, faster on a windy night. A poorly insulated house can hit interior 40s within 12 hours. This is why the 72-hour window matters: by hour 24 you need a plan, and by hour 48 you need an executed plan.

Should I leave the faucets running during a winter storm?

A slow drip — not a stream — on the cold-water faucet of every exterior wall. Moving water resists freezing better than still water. The cost is pennies; the savings is a burst pipe that floods a wall.

Is it safe to use a propane heater indoors during a power outage?

Only heaters explicitly rated for indoor use, in a ventilated space, with a battery-powered CO detector in the same room. Camp-stove-style propane heaters are not rated for indoor use and will produce CO. Read the label, not the marketing.

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Same event, different scope

Other winter storm & extended outage durations

Same scope, different event

The 72-hour version for other events

Run the numbers

How much water and food, exactly, for this duration

The list above tells you what to stock. The calculators below tell you how much — sized to your household and this duration.

Go deeper