With extreme cold and winter weather blanketing much of the country this weekend, Triangle residents are bracing for freezing temperatures, ice, and potentially prolonged power outages. Local and state officials are encouraging everyone to gather the supplies they need to be stuck inside for a few days—food, blankets, flashlights, medication—and urging them to stay off the roads.
This is all sound advice. We at the INDY, though, were curious about some less common tips for getting through a winter storm (relatively) comfortably, and, even perhaps, enjoyably. So we reached out to Ali Williams, founder of Wayfinder Outdoors in Raleigh, which leads wilderness classes and trips.
Williams has been an outdoor educator and wilderness expedition leader since 2009 and has taught wilderness survival around the world for 15 years. Her experience trekking in cold climates would make many Southerners shiver: She led horsepacking trips in the Sierra Nevada mountains and hiked the Annapurna circuit in Nepal, which climbs to elevations of 18,000 feet. And now she can add to her resumé contestant on a survival competition show; she’s on the new season of Naked and Afraid, which will air on the Discovery Channel on February 15.
“I’m really lucky that my work has allowed me to spend extended periods of time living in wild places and all of that knowledge and experience absolutely informs how I prepare for and behave during storms,” Williams told the INDY.
So how does a survival expert—with plenty of experience enduring days without heat, electricity, and streaming services—get through a winter storm? Via email, here’s Williams’ advice.
On Staying Warm
Thickness = warmth, mostly: That kid in A Christmas Story did have it right—the thicker the insulation, the warmer you’ll be. The KEY thing to understand about insulation is that it is the air pockets inside of the insulation that keeps us warm. Down is such a popular insulating material because all those feathers create lots and lots of air pockets—but they only work when they’re fluffy.
Imagine you put a down comforter on a hard floor and then sit on it. Your body weight compresses the down under you, rendering it useless. There’s nothing protecting your bum from the cold floor. Foam is full of air pockets, but the rigidity of the material keeps it from compressing flat under pressure. Foam under you, fluffy blankets over you. But thickness isn’t the whole picture …
Little fire, little cabin: I want you to imagine your body is a little campfire. You can’t really make it bigger, and if it goes out, well, that’s bad because you’re dead. You have a little fire, and it’s cold out. Do you build a big cabin around it, or a little one? Right, a little one. Both the thickness of the insulation—and—the size of the space matter. This is why cold weather sleeping bags are mummy shaped—your body has to heat up the space between you and the insulation. Too big a bag, and your body just spends all its energy losing heat instead of resting.
If I’m in a cold weather survival situation, I build the smallest shelter I can with the thickest insulation possible. When the heat goes out in our homes, we need to capture the heat of our bodies to stay warm. Since we can’t exactly make our homes smaller or more insulated, we need to get creative.
It is a great idea to move mattresses into a common area (like the living room) and close off any rooms you don’t really need to use. Even better—and more fun—take it a step further and build an insulated fort in your living room using spare blankets, pillows, mattresses, etc. The goal is to create an insulated space that is as small as is comfortably possible to hang out in and sleep in. Make sure you have flashlights and battery powered lanterns, because insulated forts and candles don’t mix!
Words of warning: If you have a fireplace, make sure your carbon monoxide detectors still work when you lose power. Most that are wired in should have a backup battery.
On Cooking and Eating:
I have a two-burner propane camping stove that I’ll use to cook and make coffee. During Fran, my mom cooked everything [outside] on our propane grill with a cast iron griddle which works well but isn’t very fun in freezing temps. It’s ideal if you have a camping stove, but you can forgo cooking and plan meals that don’t need the stove. This is fairly unpleasant for some folks, but there are foods that can be cold-soaked to prepare instead of cooked hot. Examples include oatmeal, freeze-dried meals, and ramen. It works in a pinch.
Remember that fats are important fuel. Many mountaineers swear that a tab of butter keeps them warmer at night. If that doesn’t sound appetizing, you could swap it for a spoonful of nut butter.
On Passing the Time:
I think ice and snow are beautiful, and so I get outside to enjoy the winter wonderland. I like to see how different everything looks, take photos, and go sledding. Snow is also a great time to find tracks of all the animals that live around us. It’s fun to try to figure out what the animal that left them was doing. I’m rarely bored during storms because there’s so much to see and do!
Exploring outside can get your warm clothes wet, and without electricity to run the dryer, it is important to have extra warm clothes to wear while what you explored in hangs to dry.
I love to read and to write and see power outages as a good opportunity to catch up on my to-be-read lists or spend time in a universe of my own creation. There’s also the pile of clothes to be mended, which would be a good project to tackle, too.
One of my favorite things about storms is how neighborhoods come together. During Fran, us kids ran around in packs, climbing trees and riding bikes. In the ice storm of ‘03 (or was it ‘02?) I remember sledding with friends, and gathering by my friend’s wood fireplace. It’s a great time to invite your neighbors over for stories and hot cocoa if you have a wood fireplace (or a fire pit) or have a neighborhood competition for who can find the biggest icicle.
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