I have learned a ton perusing this forum, but sometimes experience is the best teacher. Our experience:

1. Beforehand: Topped off car gas, bought processed food, filled numerous containers with water for drinking, found one 5-gal container had a leak--have to replace.

2. Our town (15 miles from Martin Focazio), started robo-calling on Friday, October 26th, strongly advising everyone to bring their outside "stuff" inside, and to fill your tub with water (for flushing when there's no power). We did both. Our neighbors did neither. What happened? Discovered our tub has a drain that isn't sealed, so we found it empty Tuesday morning. But, the town's water wells have generators, so we had water pressure the whole time power was out. The neighbor's "stuff" blew all over the place.

3. Power went out @ 9 on Monday night. Why? A neighbor's tree fell across the power/telephone/cable lines, snapped a pole in half, lay across the street, cutting off access to two homes, and leaving a live cable on the street which hissed, sparked, and smoked, before the town pulled the switches for the section covering the live wire. Had the town then cut and capped the line, they could've restored power to 50-60 homes leaving 4 homes without. But it was a bit windy at the time. And wet. No fun for linemen. Quite dangerous, in fact. Unfortunately, they never came back to do the temporary fix. They just waited until they received enough complaints (not by me) that they came out with several bucket trucks, a new pole, etc. and knocked out the whole job.

4. What happened when the power went out? I broke out the LED lights of all variety. I hadn't made any bigger purchases, such as a generator, chainsaw, and our house has oil heat requiring electricity for the fan and thermostat. So no heat. It wasn't that cold, and we have sweaters, coats, blankets, etc., so that wasn't a problem (this time). Now I know you are all screaming at your computers about all the things I could've done. You are absolutely right. However, sometimes you have to experience something to get DW to see the light. Now DW and I are having discussions about generators and wood stoves.

4.1. Our house is shadowed by tall trees, and we had fears of a fate that Martin actually experienced, but we were spared this time. Others in town were not so lucky. We'll cut down anything that seems diseased, weak, or dead, otherwise these trees are a constant source of shade, leaf compost, & firewood for my camp stoves.

4.2. The sump pumps ceased to function without electricity. Fortunately, there was surprisingly little rain, so our basement filled slowly. On Tuesday, our neighbor ran an extension cord from his generator to our basement, and our pumps took an hour to remove 24 hours of accumulated water.

5. I was prepared to bug out, with a waterproof bag for the roof of the car, and all our camping gear staged, ready to toss in. Wondered what would happen if tree fell on garage or in front of garage. Wondered which way to drive--the storm was huge, everywhere. Decided to shelter-in-place. Noted that interstates were first restricting traffic & speed limits, later were closed.

6. Lost power at work (1 mile away from home). Still not on. A big tree from work fell across the arterial road and closed it. Although the resultant detour was a very short, I went to work at clearing it with a foldable hand-saw. (I was going stir-crazy at home.) Then the timber truck we called for showed up and cleared the tree in short order.

7. Re-learned that my wood camp stoves were hard to ignite in the wind and wet--something I had been practicing in varying conditions with DS over the summer.

8. Could've bugged out to relatives who are close and had only 12 hours with no power, but stuck it out at home. DD & DS had no school for days. Becoming stir-crazy was an issue here. Revealed how our lives have become tied in to electricity.