I decided a bit ago to start checking my gear, especially emergency items, on a regular basis, and decided to comply with the changing of the seasons - each solstice and equinox - peruse the goodies and see that they still function as intended.

This works for me because, even in benign southern California, what functions in winter is not always the best in summer and one should make changes accordingly. I especially focus on electronics and the condition of batteries. It is a good occasion to consider replacement and change, perform any maintenance, and just generally review adequacy of the gear.

What ever your selected interval, periodic review of critical items is well worth the time and effort involved.

Have you noticed how the days are already getting longer?

Happy holidays to all!! In the coming year, may we all say goodbye to covid-19!

Further events:

About thirty minutes after I posted, it was lights out and electricity off: The power company threw the switch and shut off our area due to concerns over high winds damaging equipment and causing significant wildfire:

This is a practice which I heartily endorse, especially after a wildfire devastated our area a few years ago. Nevertheless, it is a major inconvenience. In our case, no light, heat or internet (hence, no ETS!!)

Not surprisingly, it was hard to get reliable, up to date information. Projected to last bout two hours at first, the lights finally came on 25 hours later, along with heat and running hot water.

Lessons learned:

It is good to have decent camping gear and to be familiar with it. You will probably be using it in low light conditions. Decent sleeping bags compensate for unheated dwellings.

Luci solar powered lanterns are real winners. I used several, and they provided even, soft light and they are fairly cheap. Also useful are good headlamps, used for task lighting. Current models have variable light levels, and we used lower levels most of the time, which helps with run time, which is critical.

Smart phones are absolutely critical. With no internet or TV, our phones were our best way to keep with events. much of our activity centered around using, or charging, our phones. It is hard to have too many power banks, or lights/power banks when the duration of the outage is indefinite.

It is useful to have food on hand which can be eaten with little or no prep. The most elaborate cooking I did was a four minute or so heating of water this morning for the indispensable cup of coffee. I used an iso-butane cartridge one burner stove, in preference to a two burner propane or alcohol stove for ease of use and quick results. The ability to cook in several ways is good!

A few weeks ago, I posted an inquiry about attachments that would shift electricity from large power tool batteries and recharge smaller devices. i followed the advice I received and all worked extremely well. Thanks a bunch to you all!

In many ways, this was a pretty good training exercise for something more major, like a big earthquake, where we might spend days camping out at home.

I'm glad you are back up and running!

It's very expensive, but when we moved to our rural retirement home we had a whole house generator installed. Three days after we moved in, a massive storm hit the area and shut our electricity off for seven days. Our generator ran flawlessly (we were lucky enough to have a natural gas line on our road). We shut it down when away from the house, and at night, and we had neighbors over to get water and take showers.

After that we never doubted our investment.

I think some kind of backup, either a generator or solar, makes more and , more sense, especially in the coming era of PSPS (Public Safety Power Shutoffs).

Today, i put the luci lights out to recharge. it was a lousy day, with light sprinkles and little or no visible sun. They still acquired a small charge and would have been of some value

hurricane Irma a couple of years ago (less than 3 day outage) was my first with portable generator... and a couple of the lessons learned after 2004/2005 (9 and 5 day outages) proved themselves... small things, but made life a lot easier

switch to a flat Asian style single burner stove capable of running on propane or butane... heated a pan of water and just poured it through the brew pot of the inexpensive Mr Coffee filter basket

a multi plug power strip that can supply all my chargers off the same 120V circuit

a stainless insulated mug (Yeti clone) to keep iced tea cool (I swich my refrigerator contents to a 7 day cooler with 4 frozen 1 gallon jugs

1 7/8" ball on the riding mower to pull the utility trailer... mounted the 3500W gen set to use squeeze bulb siphon fuel system so neighbors could provide fuel to keep their refrigerators up... made yard clean up easier with the trailer

regards

A "solstice check" is a good idea, to check functionality and replace items that mysteriously went AWOL.

Our winter so far has been mild, and I have been remiss (lazy actually) in bulking up the winter car kits. Time to remedy that.