How to stay connected when the power's out
Conserve battery from minute one
Don't wait until 20%. Lower screen brightness, turn on low-power mode, close background apps, and switch on Wi-Fi/Bluetooth only when needed. If cell signal is weak, the phone burns battery hunting for a tower — airplane mode when you don't need connectivity dramatically extends runtime.
Charge without wall power
A charged power bank is the simplest backup — keep one charged for storm season. A car charger works (run the engine outdoors, never in a closed garage — CO). Laptops, and increasingly portable power stations, can top off a phone many times; see choosing home backup power.
Text instead of calling
Networks get congested during and after a disaster. Per FEMA's family emergency communication plan guide, a text message may get through when a phone call will not, because a text needs far less bandwidth than a call. If you do call, keep it brief and stick to vital information, which eases congestion and saves battery, and wait 10 seconds before redialing: redialing too quickly adds to a clogged network.
Wireless Emergency Alerts and weather radio
Most phones receive Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) — the short government messages for extreme weather, evacuation, and AMBER alerts — with no app and no signup; check they're enabled in your phone's notification settings. A battery or hand-crank NOAA weather radio is the reliable backstop when cell networks fail.
Your home internet and cordless phones are down too
An outage kills your Wi-Fi router and any cordless landline (the base needs power). A traditional corded landline may still work. Cell towers have backup batteries but not unlimited runtime, so service can degrade in a long, wide outage. Under FCC rules, a carrier must put through a 911 call from any phone that works on its network, even one with no active plan — but 911 cannot call a no-plan phone back, so give your exact location as soon as you can.
The out-of-area contact trick
FEMA's guide recommends a contact who lives outside your community or state: in a disaster it may be easier to make a long-distance call than to call across town, because local phone lines can be jammed, and one person out of town can relay "we're fine" between family members who can't reach each other directly. Ready.gov's family communication plan card has a line for exactly this person. Agree on who it is — and make sure everyone has the number on paper, not just in a dead phone.
Download the outage before the outage
While you still have power and Wi-Fi: save offline maps of your area, screenshot your utility's outage line and your account number, and bookmark your county's page on our site (search your address once and save the page it opens). Two minutes of downloads turns a dead-internet evening from isolating into merely boring.
Public power and charging
Libraries, community centers, and cooling/warming centers usually have outlets and often Wi-Fi during local emergencies (call 211 to find open ones). Charging from a car works — engine running, parked outdoors, never in a garage — but idling burns fuel you may not be able to replace soon, since gas stations without backup power can't pump.
When you truly have no bars
Signal is physics: a window, an upper floor, or a nearby hill can be the difference between zero and one bar — and one bar is enough for a text. Wi-Fi calling works over any working Wi-Fi (a powered business, a neighbor on a different grid segment) if your phone has it enabled — turn it on today, not during the storm. Many recent phones also include satellite emergency messaging; check whether yours does and how to use it before you ever need it.
Keep the car able to help
The half-tank habit exists for outages: a car is a phone charger, a warm/cool refuge, and transportation to working infrastructure — but stations without backup power can't pump, so the fuel (or charge) you have when the lights go out may be all you get for a while. Park it where a garage door that won't open can't trap it.
Let alerts do the watching
Instead of repeatedly refreshing to see if power's back, set a free outage alert for your county or city — no email or account needed (on iPhone, add the site to your Home Screen first) — and save your battery for what matters.
General safety information drawn from the public sources linked above, not medical, electrical or legal advice for your situation. In an emergency, call 911.