How to Prepare for a Weather Emergency
Consumer Reports offers tips on protecting your home, family, pets, and more
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When you hear about a weather emergency in your area, such as the winter storms sweeping across large areas of the country (status as of 3 a.m. on Feb. 7, 2025) it’s time to prepare and check your readiness.
What to do? Consumer Reports offers a comprehensive guide on how to prepare for approaching storms. Here’s a rundown of what to do now. (Also see our advice on how to keep your pipes from freezing and bursting and recommendations for the best space heaters for room heating.)
Choose the Best Snow Blower
Make quick work of clearing out with a top-rated gas or electric snow blower.
How to Prepare
Get your home ready for evacuating. If a mandatory evacuation is announced as a storm approaches, you should know what to do to your home before you leave. Read more about preparing your home before evacuating ahead of a storm.
Have a “go bag” ready. In addition to preparing your home, you should have a bag of essential items to take with you. Wondering what to put in it? Read more about what to include in a go bag.
Follow CR’s tips for safe winter driving.
Longer-Term Planning
Even if you’re not immediately threatened by a storm or another emergency, it’s always good to be prepared. Here are some things you can do for the long term.
Update your homeowners insurance. When disaster strikes, you can save a lot of time, aggravation, and money by having a good insurance policy. How do you know which insurer is best or whether you have enough coverage? Check out the best homeowners insurance companies in Consumer Reports’ latest ratings.
Protection against flooding. Think you don’t need flood insurance? You don’t want to wait until disaster strikes to find out. Here’s what you need to know about flood insurance.
Have an emergency fund. Four in 10 American adults don’t have enough savings to cover a $400 emergency expense, according to a 2018 Federal Reserve survey. Now is the best time to get started on making sure your emergency fund is big enough.
Best Portable Generators to Power Your Home
These workhorses provide 7,000 to more than 8,000 watts of power and usually weigh upward of 200 pounds. They’re what you want to power most or all of your home’s essentials during a prolonged outage. Prices currently range from just under $1,000 to nearly $2,000. See our generator ratings and buying guide for more options and shopping advice.
@consumerreports Pro tip: Choose a water or battery-powered backup sump pump. Discover other emergency preparation tips through the link in our bio. #emergencypreparedness #sumppump #hometips
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