Ten minutes now means you're not guessing when the power actually goes out.
The alert goes off on everyone's phone at once, that flat, urgent buzz that means a storm's coming tonight. You already know the drill: flashlights out, phone chargers found, the good batteries pulled from the drawer nobody organizes. What you haven't thought about is what happens the second the power goes and your home Internet goes down with it.
Batteries, water, a flashlight that actually works, most households get this part right by instinct. It's the ordinary emergency checklist, and there's a reason it's ordinary, it works.
Your home Internet runs through equipment that needs power. When the power goes, so does your Wi-Fi, along with your ability to check the weather, text your family, or work if you need to. Cell towers can get overloaded too when everyone nearby is trying to do the same thing at once.
This is where a mobile hotspot earns its place on the emergency checklist. Most phones can create their own Wi-Fi signal off mobile data, enough to check in, pull up a map, or send the one text that matters. Pairing Internet and Mobile on one account also means one number to call if something goes wrong, not two companies pointing at each other.
Know how to turn on your phone's hotspot right now, not while you're already losing signal bars. Tell your family the plan out loud, so nobody's figuring it out for the first time during a blackout. That's the whole difference between panicking and just handling it.
Next time that alert goes off, the routine stays the same, flashlights, chargers, the good batteries. Except this time, you already know what happens if the power takes the Wi-Fi down with it. And that's usually all it takes to feel like you've got this, not scrambling, just handling it.