Last year, the winter weather arrived much earlier than usual. I was already running the furnace by the end of September. The temperature quickly plummeted below zero and remained there for several weeks straight. It never warmed up above freezing for eight straight months. We accumulated over six feet of snow. It was necessary to plow and shovel out the driveways and walkways every single day, sometimes more than once. The piles of snow grew taller than my garage roof. I spent a fortune on my heating bills and couldn’t wait to shut down the furnace and open the windows. The weather warmed up quite suddenly and very quickly. Along with rapid snow melt, we got hit with torrential rains and high winds. There was widespread power outages and flooding. Without power, I was unable to run the sump pump, so my basement filled with water. Since the air conditioner runs on electricity, we were also left without cooling. The house quickly became overheated and overly moist. There were concerns with mold and mildew growth. I couldn’t even open the windows because of all the rain. The food spoiled in the freezer and we needed to fill buckets with water to flush the toilets. It was a horrendous experience. After power was restored, I hired a licensed HVAC contractor to check out the furnace and air conditioner. I worried that the flooding had damaged the equipment and didn’t dare start up the cooling unit until it was properly serviced. Fortunately, only a cleaning was necessary. The HVAC contractor recommended that I invest into a permanently installed standby generator. While the generator was super expensive, I was willing to pay anything to avoid being left without running water, lights or air conditioning again. If we ever lost power in the winter, we couldn’t stay in the house without heat.