What Should Be in My Home Winter Emergency Kit?
Oklahoma winters are mild right up until they aren't — then an ice storm knocks the power out for days. Here's what to gather now so a long, cold outage is an inconvenience instead of an emergency.
The thing about an Oklahoma winter is how quietly it can turn. We’ll go weeks with afternoons in the sixties, and then one system rolls through, coats everything in a quarter-inch of ice overnight, and the lights go out — along with the heat, and sometimes the water pressure. The storms that do the real damage here aren’t the snowy ones; they’re the icy ones that drag power lines and tree limbs down together and leave whole neighborhoods dark for days.
Early November is the right moment to get ready, because the point of an emergency kit is that it’s already assembled when you need it. Nobody wants to be hunting for batteries by phone-light with the temperature dropping. We talked to a family last winter who rode out a three-day ice-storm outage on nothing but a couple of candles and the food in a cooler on the porch — they made it through, but they said the next thing they did once the power came back was build a real kit. Here’s what goes in one for a cold-weather home.
Light and power
When an outage hits in winter, it usually hits after dark and lasts into the night, so light comes first.
- A flashlight or headlamp for every person, plus a stash of spare batteries in the sizes they take. Headlamps are the unsung hero — they leave your hands free to work the water shutoff or carry a kid to bed.
- A battery or hand-crank lantern for lighting a whole room, which beats one harsh flashlight beam. Skip the open-flame candles if you can; in a house full of restless people and pets, they’re a fire you don’t need.
- A power bank, charged and ready, to keep one phone alive for days. Your phone is your weather radio, your utility-outage map, and your line to help, so protecting its battery matters more than almost anything else in the kit.
- A battery or hand-crank radio so you can still get storm and road updates once phones run low.
Staying warm without the furnace
This is the part people underestimate. A well-sealed house holds its heat for a while, but after a day without the furnace, the indoor temperature follows the outdoor one down.
- Extra blankets, sleeping bags, and warm layers kept somewhere you can grab them in the dark. Wool and fleece hold warmth even a little damp; cotton doesn’t.
- A plan to concentrate your warmth. Pick one interior room, close its door, and let everyone camp there — body heat and a few blankets keep a small closed room far more livable than trying to heat the whole house.
- A safe backup heat source, used carefully. If you have a wood-burning fireplace, keep dry, seasoned wood on hand. If you lean on a space heater, only run it from a backup power source rated for it, and never leave it unattended. And the hard rule: never burn charcoal, run a gas range or oven, or bring a grill or outdoor heater inside for warmth. Those produce carbon monoxide, and the cold is survivable in a way that carbon monoxide isn’t.
For a home that simply can’t afford to go cold — someone on medical equipment, pipes that run through vulnerable spots, or just a household that would rather not gamble on an ice storm — a standby generator sized to carry your furnace and essentials turns a multi-day outage into a non-event. It’s the difference between weathering a storm and barely noticing one.
Water and food
Ice storms can knock out water in two ways — a well pump with no power, or city pressure that drops — so don’t assume the tap will work.
- Stored drinking water: about one gallon per person per day, for at least three days. If a freeze is in the forecast, fill a few extra jugs and even the bathtub ahead of time.
- Food that needs no cooking or refrigeration — canned goods, peanut butter, crackers, dried fruit, and the like — plus a manual can opener, which is the piece everyone forgets.
- A cooler. Once the power’s out, your freezer buys you about a day if you keep it shut; a cooler on a cold porch extends your perishables well past that.
The things that prevent damage
A winter outage isn’t only about comfort — it’s where a frozen pipe or a gas leak can turn a bad night into an expensive one. A few items keep a problem small.
- Know your shutoffs, and keep a way to reach them. Walk your home now and find your main water shutoff, your gas meter and its valve, and your electrical panel. Label them, keep the right wrench near the gas meter, and make sure a flashlight lives nearby. If a pipe bursts in the cold, shutting the water off fast is the whole ballgame.
- A working carbon monoxide detector with fresh batteries. Combustion appliances and any backup heat make winter the season this alarm matters most — and a battery-backed one keeps watching even with the power out.
- A first-aid kit and a week’s buffer of any prescription medications. Pharmacies close and roads ice over; a little cushion on refills takes one worry off the table.
- Warm gear to keep pipes from freezing — towels or foam insulation you can wrap vulnerable pipes with, and the know-how to let a faucet drip once the heat is off a while.
Put it somewhere you’ll actually find it
A kit scattered across three closets isn’t a kit. Gather the light, the batteries, the radio, the first-aid supplies, and the can opener into one labeled bin in a spot everyone in the house knows — a hall closet, the pantry, by the garage door. Add the perishable pieces (water, blankets) around it. Then, once a year when the clocks change in the fall, spend ten minutes swapping batteries and checking expiration dates. That small habit is what keeps the kit ready instead of theoretical.
The bottom line
Most Oklahoma winters pass without ever testing your emergency kit — and that’s exactly the point. The one winter that does test it, an ice storm that takes the power for three or four days, is far easier to ride out when the flashlights, water, blankets, and know-where-the-shutoffs-are are already in place. Build it now, in the quiet weeks before the first hard storm, and you can stop watching the forecast with dread.
If getting winter-ready turns up something bigger — a furnace you’re not sure will make it through the season, pipes in a spot you worry about, or a case for backup power before the ice arrives — Graco can help across heating, plumbing, and electrical for homeowners throughout Edmond, Oklahoma City, and the surrounding metro. You’ll get flat-rate pricing you approve before any work begins. Call (405) 500-5333 and we’ll help you head into winter ready for whatever it brings.
Frequently asked questions
- How long should a home winter emergency kit be able to cover?
- Plan for three days without power as your baseline, and be comfortable stretching to a week. Oklahoma's worst winter trouble comes from ice storms, and when ice brings down enough lines, utility crews can't restore everyone at once — rural and hard-hit neighborhoods have gone the better part of a week before. Three days covers the typical outage; a week's worth of water, light, warmth, and medication means a long one is still just an inconvenience.
- Is it safe to use a propane or kerosene heater indoors during an outage?
- Only if it's specifically rated and labeled for indoor use, and even then with a window cracked and a working carbon monoxide detector nearby. Any heater that burns fuel produces carbon monoxide, and a camping or patio heater meant for outdoors can fill a closed room with it fast. Never run a gas range, oven, grill, or generator indoors for heat under any circumstances — those are the setups that send people to the hospital every winter. If in doubt, layer up, close off one room, and wait it out rather than risk it.
- What's the one thing people forget until it's too late?
- Knowing where their shutoffs are and keeping a way to work them. When a pipe bursts or you smell gas in the dark, you need to find your main water valve and electrical panel immediately — and you can't read a label by the light of a dying phone. A good flashlight, and a five-minute walk to locate your water shutoff, gas meter, and panel before you ever need them, saves more damage than any other single item in the kit.