Fern Sounds Cute Until Your Pipes Explode

Guest on PBN; https://www.youtube.com/live/vjxX1Sz3AeU?si=mS1rqy60ey4EHPzU

The forecast isn’t teasing flakes; it’s promising days of freezing rain, sub‑freezing highs, and a real chance of extended power outages. We break down a practical, affordable game plan to keep your home warm, your pipes intact, and your food safe when the grid goes quiet and the cold sets in.

We start with the risk picture for Central Virginia and parts of the Plains—why ice is the real threat, how fast indoor temps can crash, and what matters most over the first 48 hours. From there, we map out a heat strategy that actually works: using a kerosene torpedo heater with proper ventilation to push warm air where it counts, closing foundation vents, insulating pipes, and staging blankets and layers. We also get specific about generator readiness—test starts, safe placement to reduce theft and fumes, CO shutoff considerations, and realistic watt budgeting for essentials like lighting and internet.

Food and storage come next. A new full‑size fridge is great until the power blinks, so we lean on a 12‑volt compressor fridge, the natural cold outside for sealed bins on a shaded deck, and smart habits to keep a chest freezer cold as long as possible. We talk about the supply crunch already visible in propane lines and grocery aisles, and offer alternatives when stores are picked over. Communication ties it together: local emergency text alerts, satellite internet with a modest power draw, and clear, low‑bandwidth ways to stay connected with neighbors and get reliable updates without draining batteries.

Along the way, we share notes from a recent guest spot on the Prepper Broadcasting Network, answer common winter prep questions, and keep the focus on simple steps that punch above their weight. If you’re staring down sleet, ice, and bitter cold, this walkthrough helps you act now—before the outage—so the next seven days feel controlled, not chaotic. If this helped, subscribe, leave a quick review, and share this with a neighbor who could use a calm plan before the storm hits.

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Chapters

• 0:09 Storm Warning And Show Opening
• 0:41 Forecast And Main Concerns
• 1:57 Heating Plan And Pipe Protection
• 3:06 Fridge Woes And Cold Storage Hacks
• 4:18 Timeline: Snow To Sleet To Ice
• 4:58 Last‑Minute Prep And Supply Runs
• 6:25 Guest Spot Recap And Resources
• 7:29 Gift Card Giveaway Details
• 8:16 Safety Warnings, Pets, Internet, Generator
• 11:05 Sign‑Off And Stay Safe

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:09

The National Labor Service has issued a severe thunderstorm warning. Welcome. To the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, where prepping doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Coming to you from a well-defended off-grid compound high in the mountains. Coming to you from his Florida room in Richmond, Virginia. Neither off-grid nor well-defended, unless you count as chickens and cats, here is your host, Keith.

SPEAKER_00: 0:41

Everybody, this is Keith, and welcome back to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, January the 23rd, 2026. The winter storm is fast approaching Central Virginia, the Great Plains, Oklahoma, Texas. That area has already seen the start of the storm and everything that I have listened to and watched. This is going to be catastrophic when it comes to the amount of freezing rain and ice and the amount of folks that are going to be without power for an extended period of time. And I spoke about this in the last podcast. I'm not too worried about the snow. I'm not too worried about losing power. Obviously, I wish I didn't, but we're going to. But the thing that's concerning to me is on Monday, the low is 13 and the high is 34. Tuesday, the low is six. Wednesday 11. Thursday 11. Friday and Saturday, five degrees. The high, it is not going to get above freezing, at least for the next seven to ten days. That's the part that really concerns me. I'm more worried about the bitter cold in conjunction with losing power and keeping the pipes from freezing. I've got a few tricks up my sleeve, and if I have to break those out, I will. But for the most part, I'm as prepared as I am going to get. Tomorrow I'm gonna go out and fill up the Jeep, fill up my last gas can, and actually fill up a five-gallon container that I have set aside for kerosene. I have a large, I guess they're called like torpedo heaters. It runs off kerosene. I don't know how many 20,000 BTU or something like that. I used it several years ago under the house to make sure the pipes, well, the pipes became frozen, so I thawed the pipes before they actually burst. Now, since then I had gone down and insulated the pipe, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal. The foundation vents are closed, the crawl space vents are closed, so that should not be that big of a problem without the power. The house, both interior and exterior, is pretty much going to reach the ambient temperature outside in short order. And therefore, underneath the house will also start to get just as cold. That's what I'm worried about. Now, last time I did it, I took the little torpedo heater, had it under my deck where the crawl space door is, and I had it, everything was vented to the outside. The heater was actually underneath my deck, but it was able to blow enough warm air under the house, and I was able to keep it warm enough till the power came back on, and then that just kind of took care of itself. So my fridge has been out for a few weeks. I had a new fridge that was scheduled to be delivered Monday, and now it's gonna be delivered tomorrow between 7:30 and 11:30, which is great because I'll get my new working fridge just in time for the power to go out. So they're gonna install it, we'll plug it in, make sure it gets cold, make sure the ice maker works. And I don't think I'm gonna put any food in it because the power is just gonna go out. I'll be using my 12 volt ice co fridge, which I've been using for the last week, week and a half, and it's working just fine. Plus, it's gonna be cold enough that my deck and my entire backyard will be a big ass refrigerator. So if I have to move anything out of my chest freezer in the garage, which I probably might not have to, depending on how long the power's out. But if I have to, then I'll just move it to the outdoor fridge slash cooler on the deck. So it's gonna be interesting. Snow starting here in central Virginia Saturday, about 6 or 7 p.m., about four or five inches, maybe six inches, and then early morning Sunday, like 7, 8, 9 a.m. is when the sleet starts, which is fine. Sleet is better than the icing that we're gonna get probably starting around noon or two is when the ice comes in, the freezing rain. That's when we're gonna lose power. I know I mentioned before that a lot of local counties, local jurisdictions, cities, and towns have their own emergency management text line set up. And I just received a couple messages about a half hour ago from my local county administration. Pending storm, cold weather, give a couple checklists. And really, we're 24 hours from the weather hitting. So if you haven't got your stuff together by now, you need to do it. On the way home from work today, I went by a store that sells propane. It's kind of like a satellite store. Their main hub is outside the city where all the big propane tanks are. They have showrooms, gas grills, and gas stoves and gas appliances in their showroom. Well, they have these little satellite offices all over the city where you can look at a smaller version of the showroom, I guess. Plus, you can get your propane tanks filled there. The little ones, the big ones, you have an RV, that sort of thing. I was going down the road and I saw all of these cars on the shoulder of the road. And I'm thinking, is there an accident? What is going on? As I get closer to this, you know, the satellite propane store, there were probably 150 people standing in line. The parking lot was a mess. The parking lot's very small. Cars were parked all different directions, a complete disaster. And I bet you 125, 150 people in line, wrapped around the building, wrapped around the parking lot, everybody with their little 20-pound cylinders wanting to get them filled. Now, yesterday when I went to Home Depot on the way home from work, I bought their last three propane cylinders. I did an exchange and then I purchased two brand new ones, and they were out after that. Not sure if they got any back in late last night or today, probably not, with the line that I saw at the local propane store, and I'm sure the gas stations and the 7-Elevens, you know, they only carry six or eight of those canisters to exchange or to purchase. So I assume they've been out for quite some time. Stopped by the grocery store, stopped by Kroger just to grab one or two things. There was no milk, there was no bread, some lunch meat, but the store was picked over. So again, I'm as prepared as I'm gonna get, and it's just kind of one of those come what may. I know I mentioned the other day that I was gonna be on the Prepper Broadcasting Network with James, and that went very well. I posted the link on my Twitter account, and I will copy the link and put it in the show notes for this podcast, for this podcast. So please, if you get a chance, check out that link. It was a very cool conversation, very chill conversation. There were some people in chat. We answered a few questions, but just a very chill conversation on how best to prepare for bad winter weather here in the Richmond area. Snow removal is non-existent, and there's reasons for that. That was explained in the podcast, as well as the uh the guest episode I did with James the other night. So it was a real chill episode. We just talked about things, answered a few questions. It was a lot of fun. He's been trying to get me on uh one of their podcasts for quite some time, and just scheduling life and work just seems to get in the way of all the fun, all the fun stuff. So it was nice. A couple nights ago, obviously, it was nice to finally be able to get on there and chit-chat with James and the folks that that were listening and asking some questions. So don't forget, I'm doing the giveaway. I've received several emails. I'm gonna go ahead and run this out a couple more days to give everybody a chance. So it's a$25 Amazon gift card. So email me at practicalprep podcast at gmail.com and in the title of the body just put, hey, pick me gift card giveaway, something to let me know that the email is about the gift card giveaway. Probably in the next couple days, if we don't lose power, I'll get back on, record a podcast, random number generator thingy. I'll pick a winner and I'll email the winner a digital code and$25 Amazon gift card. If you live in a foreign country, it will automatically convert the$25 US dollars to your currency. So practical prep podcast at gmail.com. Folks, please be careful. If you are in the path of this storm, be it just snow, snow, ice, sleet, any combination of those above, this has the potential to be life-threatening. In fact, it will be a life-threatening storm for a lot of people. Looking at the ice map and how they rank the amount of ice, there's a there's some sort of scale, the Fitzer-Pritzer scale or something to that effect. It's like one through five, where five is catastrophic. And there are just a few towns or cities located within this catastrophic category. And according to their little scale, if you're part of that area that gets a catastrophic hit by the ice storm, the potential to lose power, potentially you could lose power for several weeks. Now, if you're in the four zones, like one through five. Number one was you know, 12 to 24 hours, number two, two to three days, number three, up to a week, number four, up to three weeks, and then catastrophic level five is good luck, you're on your own. You may you may never get power back at all. But unfortunately, there are folks that are in these level four and five zones. So, folks, please be careful. Don't go driving around, don't go out there looking at the snow and the ice unless you absolutely have to. Keep yourself warm, keep your pets warm. The chickens are now in the garage. Mr. Rogers is curled up in his blanket in my K-van. And of course, Canaan, my indoor cat, he's just spoiled, so he doesn't have to worry about the cold weather. I do have hardwood floors, so when we do lose power, those floors are gonna get cold. I'm as prepared as I'm gonna get. I do have my Starlink hooked up. And the good thing about Starlink, this past week, they doubled the amount of data, but they kept the price. So I have like the roaming package, and it's 50 gigs for$50, and I can take it with me when I go camping and that sort of thing. Well, they just doubled it. So for$50, I get 100 gigs. That's kind of cool. So when I lose power, I can still run the Starlink, and the Starlink, the router runs about 75 watts. So it pulls about 75 between 60 and 75 watts. And so we'll see when I get on the browser, we'll see how much power that thing's that thing pulls. But generator started right up yesterday, plugged in a propane cylinder, hit the electric start. After about five or six seconds, she fired right up. I'll probably put the generator in my shed in the backyard and then run extension cords. That way it keeps the noise down and I don't have to worry about necessarily somebody coming to steal it, but I'll put it in the shed. Maybe I'll have to crack a window because it does have a CO detector on it. So it will automatically shut itself off when the CO levels get to, I guess, what it sees as a dangerous level in the event you're not venting it enough. All right, folks, thanks for stopping by. That's the big winter storm update. They call it fern, winter storm fern? I think the weather channel started naming storms a few years ago. I have no idea. I guess for ratings, I don't know. I didn't think we had the name fern. Doesn't sound very ominous, does it? It was like Nikolai or Rodrigo or Bertha or something like that. That's a winter storm, but winter storm fern doesn't sound very not a very strong name. Fern for a winter storm, I don't think is a very strong name. I don't think many people get scared of a winter, winter storm called Fern. Yeah, winter storm called Fern. I don't think anybody's gonna be scared of that. We need a Rodrigo or a Bertha or an Olga. Yeah, something like that. Anyway, folks, thanks for stopping by. I really do appreciate it. If the power doesn't go out, I will endeavor to get on and let you know what's going on here. If you guys have any questions, practicalprep podcasts at gmail.com. And everybody in the path of this storm, all the more reason. Please be careful out there. Take care of one another. And until next time, folks.

SPEAKER_01: 12:02

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