How to keep food safe during a multi-day outage

A multi-day outage is a temperature problem first. The notes below follow USDA: Keep Your Food Safe During Emergencies and FoodSafety.gov: 3 Ways to Keep Food Safe When You Lose Power, as read on November 10, 2026 and November 7, 2026. If a live page disagrees, follow the live page. A watt-hour result is not one of their tests.

What USDA says to plan on

• Keep a thermometer in the refrigerator and the freezer. Refrigerator at 40°F or below. Freezer at 0°F or below.
• Keep the doors closed. USDA says a refrigerator keeps food safe for up to 4 hours, and a full freezer holds temperature about 48 hours (about 24 hours if it is half full).
• If the power will be off longer than 4 hours, move perishable refrigerator food to a cooler with enough ice to stay at 40°F or below, and add ice as it melts.
• After more than 4 hours without power, discard perishable refrigerator food such as meat, poultry, fish, eggs, milk, leftovers, and the other items on USDA’s unsafe-foods list. Never taste food to decide.
• Freezer food that still has ice crystals, or that is at 40°F or below, may be refrozen. Quality can suffer. When in doubt, throw it out.
• USDA also says about 50 pounds of dry ice should hold an 18-cubic-foot freezer for two days, and not to touch dry ice with bare hands or put it directly on food.

FoodSafety.gov makes the same closed-door times: about 4 hours in the refrigerator, about 48 hours in a full freezer, about 24 hours in a half-full freezer. Those clocks start from cold food and a shut door. They stop applying once the door is open or you are counting on the compressor.