When I was growing up, my family would travel to the northern states so we could see snow.
Each winter, we rented the same cabin. The weather in this region was very cold and there were a lot of snowstorms. One year while we were vacationing, we met up with my family that lives nearby. Knowing that we were unfamiliar with the region and the kind of weather they experience, they warned us to stay home the following day due to an approaching snowstorm. Being from the southern region, we did not know what a snowstorm entailed. We were familiar with heavy rain and hurricanes, but never snowstorms. We decided to take their advice and hunker down for the day. We did not expect what came next. Out of nowhere, the snowfall and wind starting to pick up. Similar to a hurricane, we eventually lost electricity. We quickly realized that we were in trouble once the heating system turned off. We were immediately thinking of alternative ways to warm the cabin with no central heat or access to space heaters. We were happy to find that there was a back up furnace in the basement of the cabin. This goes to show that if you are unfamiliar with your territory, you should do research and be prepared in the event of a snowstorm or other inclimate weather situation. We were lucky that there was a back up furnace in the basement of our rental cabin. Without this, we would have been freezing and might have had to risk going out in the snowstorm. None of us had ever driven in snow or ice, so we got very lucky.