11 Costco Camping Items That'll Be WORTH GOLD in a Winter Blackout

Think back to the last list of blackout gear you saw online. It almost certainly started with the biggest, loudest, most expensive thing on the shelf, and it treated your house like something you have to beat. In the Texas freeze of 2021, the state health department confirmed 246 deaths. 161 of them came from cold exposure, mostly hypothermia, and most of those victims were sixty or older. Nineteen more died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Some of those families did something about the cold. They just did the wrong thing. I have spent a lot of nights in a tent below freezing, and winter camping taught me one lesson above all the others. You do not heat the air. You keep the person warm. So here are eleven things from the camping aisle at Costco, or close to it, ranked by how much they matter when the power is out and the thermostat keeps dropping. Some of them cost less than a pizza. One is the item I would buy first and also the one I lecture about the hardest. The best winter camp I ever had was the one where I needed nothing clever. Warm socks, a good bag, a small shelter, and nothing burning where it should not be. A house works the same way, and that is why number three is going to sound ridiculous right up until the night you try it. What we go through: Little Hotties hand warmers, 320 hours of heat for about fourteen dollars, and why they go in a sock Wool blend trail socks, and why cotton pulls heat away from your feet Headlamps, one per person, and the fall on the stairs at two in the morning Energizer Ultimate Lithium batteries, rated to forty below, and why cold alkalines only look dead An LED lantern instead of candles A hard sided cooler, frozen water blocks, and why the USDA says not to bury food in the snow The camp stove, the thermos trick, and why a cooking appliance is never a heater Reading a sleeping bag's comfort rating instead of the big number on the front Pitching a tent inside one small interior room so the family's body heat adds up The Mr. Heater Big Buddy, what it does well, and what the owner's manual says most buyers never read Portable power stations like the EcoFlow Delta 3 Plus and Jackery, what they cannot run, and why they will not charge below freezing Said plainly on safety: never run a generator in the house, the garage, the basement or a shed. Opening doors and windows will not vent enough carbon monoxide to make it safe. Outside only, at least twenty feet away, and not on a porch or in a carport. Do not warm up by a camp stove or the oven. Turn a propane heater off before you sleep, and never bring a refillable propane cylinder indoors. Put a battery powered carbon monoxide alarm outside each sleeping area and test it before the storm. The most expensive thing on this list is at the top, but not because it is expensive. It is there because it is the safest way to do a job people keep doing dangerously. And a tent, a sleeping bag and a pair of wool socks, three of the cheapest things here, do more to keep a family alive through a cold night than most gadgets could. Before the next storm, bring the power station in out of the unheated garage and charge it full. Freeze some water jugs. Find out where your nearest warming center is, or which relative still has heat, especially if you have older parents, a baby, or someone on medical equipment. Tell me in the comments what I am missing if you have ridden out a long winter outage yourself. And tell me this: what is the longest you have gone without power in winter, and what did you wish you had? #WinterBlackout #PowerOutage #Costco #WinterStorm #EmergencyPrep #WinterCamping #CarbonMonoxide #PowerStation #EcoFlow #Jackery #MrHeater #Preparedness #TexasFreeze #StayWarm #SelfReliance