Power outage: what to do, and how long food stays safe

The clock, from three federal sources

These time limits come straight from the pages named in the table. We repeated no number that we could not find on a downloaded page.

Source: USDA FSIS, Keep Your Food Safe During Emergencies, fsis.usda.gov; CDC, Discarding Food After a Power Outage, cdc.gov (page reviewed Aug. 26, 2026); FEMA Ready.gov, Power Outages, ready.gov/power-outages. Retrieved 2026-10-02. CSV, 8 rows.

The two ends of the table matter most. Four hours is short. An outage that runs through a night can pass it. Forty-eight hours is long, but only for a full freezer whose door stays closed.

Before the power goes out

USDA FSIS lists these steps for planning ahead:

• Keep an appliance thermometer in the refrigerator and the freezer. The refrigerator should read 40 °F or below and the freezer 0 °F or below.
• Group foods together. FSIS says this helps foods stay cold longer.
• Keep the freezer full. Fill empty space with frozen jugs of water, bags of ice or gel packs.
• Freeze leftovers, milk and fresh meat or poultry you will not need soon.
• Have a large insulated cooler and frozen gel packs ready.
• Find out where dry ice and block ice are sold.

Do the same for medicine and for devices that need power. Ready.gov says to talk to your medical provider about a plan for refrigerated medicines and power-dependent medical devices. For the grid side, see what SAIDI and SAIFI mean.

During the outage

Keep the refrigerator and freezer doors closed. FSIS says that if the power is off longer than about 4 hours, you can move food to a cooler filled with ice or frozen gel packs, and it says to be sure there is enough ice to keep the food at 40 °F or below. Add ice as it melts.

Food in the front, in the door, or in small thin packages defrosts faster than large thick items or food at the back or bottom of a freezer. In a snowstorm, FSIS says not to put perishable food out in the snow, because outside temperatures vary and food can meet animals or dirt. Make ice outdoors instead, in buckets or empty milk containers, and move it into the fridge or cooler.

For dry ice, FSIS gives a caution that matters: do not touch dry ice with bare hands or place it in direct contact with food. Never use a gas stove or oven to heat your home: Ready.gov warns that it raises the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning.

After the power returns

FSIS says it plainly: never taste food to find out whether it is safe. When in doubt, throw it out.

The FSIS list of foods to discard if the refrigerator was without power for more than 4 hours includes raw, cooked or leftover meat, poultry, fish and eggs, lunch meat and hot dogs, casseroles, soups and pizza, mixed salads, milk, cream, yogurt and soft cheeses, cut fresh fruit and vegetables, and cooked vegetables. It also says to throw out any food with an unusual odor, color or texture.

FSIS lists foods that can stay: mustard, ketchup, pickles and jams, whole fresh fruit and vegetables, hard and processed cheeses, butter, bread and baked goods without cream fillings, and nuts. For frozen food, FSIS says foods that thawed but still have ice crystals, or stayed at 40 °F or below, can be safely refrozen, though quality may suffer.

Ready.gov says to monitor temperatures with a thermometer and to throw away any food exposed to 40 °F or higher for two hours or more.

What else to do

Ready.gov lists a short set of steps for any outage: disconnect appliances and electronics, because power can return with surges; have plans for refrigerating medicines or running medical devices; check with local officials about heating and cooling centers; and use a generator only outdoors and away from windows. Keep flashlights for each household member and a way to charge phones.

If you use a generator, read the generator and carbon monoxide guide first. In hot weather, see heat waves and air conditioning costs. For help with a bill after a hard month, see shutoff rules by state and your state help page.

How long outages last, in the data

EIA-861 gives each utility’s average minutes without power per customer in a year, called SAIDI. In 2024 the median of 673 reporters, without major events, was 99 minutes, which is 1.7 hours a year. 15% of reporters were at 240 minutes (4 hours) or more. Counting major events, 47% of utilities with 100,000 or more home accounts reported 240 minutes or more.

A yearly average is not one outage. A customer may have no outage and another may have two long ones. The numbers show how common longer-than-4-hour totals are, and why a plan for the fridge is not a rare case. The ranking is on our most reliable power by state page.

Weather is behind many long outages. The table counts NOAA event reports for outage-relevant weather. Wind reports were 256,782 county-events over 2015 to 2025, winter storms 76,450.

Source: NOAA NCEI Storm Events 2015-2025 as grouped in data/storm_county.json. A zone event counts once in each county of the zone, so these are county-event reports, not separate storms and not utility outage records. Retrieved 2026-10-02. CSV, 66 rows.

For scale: a typical full-size refrigerator in the ENERGY STAR list uses 457 kWh a year, an average of about 52 watts, from 2,980 models. That is arithmetic on a listing. The generator guide compares it with the running load of air conditioning.

What this page cannot tell you

We are not a source of medical or legal advice. The food rules are the federal agencies’ wording, with the pages linked in the table. We have no data on your utility’s restoration time or on the length of any one outage. Call your utility to report an outage and to ask about restoration.

Key facts and where they come from

CSV, 13 rows.

Related guides

• What SAIDI and SAIFI mean
• Energy burden explained
• Why your electric bill changes by season