Cooling Down Without Power: The Florida Heat Plan

Last reviewed 1 November 2026

The storm gets the headlines. The three days after it get the hospital visits.

When a hurricane or a summer storm knocks out power in South Florida, the house does not cool down when the rain stops. It soaks up heat all day, gives very little of it back at night, and the air conditioning that made the place livable is a silent box on the wall. Adults can tough out a hot, sleepless couple of nights and mostly be fine. Babies, grandparents, and anyone with a heart condition do not have that margin. Heat is the cascade nobody plans for because it is quiet.

This is our plan for it, and the short shopping list that goes with the plan. Most of it is cheap. The expensive version of cooling, a generator running a real air conditioner, is covered in our power guide. This page is about everything below that line: how to keep people safe and sleeping in a hot house with no power at all.

The one fact the whole plan hangs on

Your body cools itself by evaporating sweat. Florida humidity slows that evaporation to a crawl, which is why 95 degrees here feels worse than 105 in the desert. Moving air speeds evaporation back up. That single fact decides what works and what does not:

• A fan pointed at dry skin helps, up to a point. Once indoor air climbs into the high 90s, a fan by itself is no longer enough, and guidance from the CDC has said so for years.
• A fan pointed at wet skin keeps working. Damp skin in moving air is the cheapest air conditioner there is, and it runs on water you already stored.
• An evaporative cooler, the swamp cooler style of box sold everywhere online, does the opposite of what we need. It pushes more moisture into air that is already saturated. In South Florida humidity it makes a room feel worse, not better. Skip it, whatever the product page promises.

So the plan has three layers: keep heat out of the house, put water on skin and air across it, and measure the room so you know when the plan is no longer enough.

Layer 1: Shade the box before you cool the people

Every degree you keep out of the house is a degree you do not have to fight later.

• Cover the sun-side windows from outside if you can. We already own the 16 mil tarp bought for roof damage. In a heat outage it does a second job: hung outside a west-facing window or sliding door, it shades the glass before the sun hits it, and outside shade works far better than anything hung inside, because the heat never gets through the glass. The zip ties from the supply closet are the mounting hardware.
• Use the mylar blankets inside. We own 25 emergency mylar blankets from the supply run. Taped shiny-side-out inside the worst window in the sleeping room, one blanket reflects a large share of the sun's heat back out. It looks strange. It works, it costs nothing extra, and the blankets go back in the closet when the power returns.
• Then pick one room. Cooling a whole house on batteries is not a real option. Cooling one bedroom, the one where the baby sleeps and everyone can pile in at night, is. Blackout curtains with a thermal lining on that room's windows, door closed, everyone sleeping in the same cooled space. Curtains run about $30 to $39 a pair for the lined ones worth having (BGment triple-weave around $30, NICETOWN lined $32 to $39), and they earn their keep every normal summer afternoon too, which is more than most emergency gear can say.
• Keep cooking heat outside. A stove or oven can raise a kitchen several degrees, and in an outage the kitchen is already the warmest room. We cook on the propane outside during an outage, the same cylinders bought for the supply closet. The house stays measurably cooler for it.

Layer 2: Cool the people, not the air

• Cooling towels. Evaporative towels are the real thing, not a gimmick: wet one, wring it, snap it, and it stays cool for three to four hours before it needs rewetting. Around the neck is where they do the most good. Frogg Toggs Chilly Pads are the standard; a six pack of the Mini size was $10.99 at Northern Tool when we checked. One towel per person, plus spares, is the whole investment.
• A mister bottle. A plain hand-pump spray bottle, the kind sold for plants or hair, turns any fan into the wet-skin setup described above. Handheld misting fans that pair a small bottle with a soft-blade fan run $10.69 to $15.43 at Walmart. For the baby, a mister plus the stroller fan we already own is the nap setup.
• Electrolytes, separated by age. Sweating through a Florida outage is not just water loss. Adults in this house use DripDrop (a 16 stick box was $17.99 when we checked). The toddler gets Pedialyte, and only Pedialyte: adult electrolyte mixes carry adult sodium loads and no pediatric dosing, and this is not the place to improvise. Pedialyte powder packets were $8.99 for an 8 count at Target, about $26.61 for a 24 count. The powder stores far better than the bottled liquid and takes no fridge space, which matters when the fridge is off.
• Rest in the heat of the day. Yard cleanup after a storm is when people get hurt. Work in the morning, stop by early afternoon, and treat the peak hours as indoor hours. That rule costs nothing and is the one most likely to be ignored, so it goes on the printed plan, not just in our heads.

Layer 3: Air that runs on batteries

Plug-in fans are furniture in an outage. The fans that matter carry their own batteries, and the honest way to read the listings is this: the runtime on the box is the runtime on the lowest speed. Plan around half the advertised number and you will not be surprised at 3 a.m.

• The bedside fans. The AMACOOL 20,000 mAh camping fan runs about $40 to $50 depending on the seller: up to 58 hours claimed on low, a built in light, a hook for hanging, and a USB output that charges a phone. Two of them cover the sleeping room, one aimed at the crib, one at the bed, and they rotate to the charger when power flickers back. Reviewers who rode out Hurricane Beryl without power for a week in Texas kept landing on the same sentence: the personal fan was the thing that made the nights bearable.
• The room fan. The Geek Aire 16 inch rechargeable floor fan (12,000 to 15,000 mAh depending on the version, up to 24 hours claimed on low, 1,900 CFM, and it doubles as a power bank) is the one bigger spend, roughly $120 to $140 depending on the seller. One of these moves air for the whole sleeping room during the day so the small fans can rest and recharge.
• What we already own that helps. The stroller fan bought for the baby in October is a clip fan with its own battery, exactly what the crib needs. The LED lanterns are fan-free, but light without heat matters too: every bulb in a closed hot room is a small heater you do not need. And the two 20,000 mAh power banks on our communications list (about $25 to $40 for the Anker class) are the reserve tank that recharges fans overnight if a neighbor's generator or a running car gives us an hour of power.

Know the number, and know when to leave

The cheapest item on the list may be the most important: an indoor thermometer with a humidity readout. The ThermoPro TP49 runs about $10 to $13, refreshes every ten seconds, and lives in the sleeping room. Feelings lie in heat, especially at night, especially with a baby who cannot tell you. The number does not.

Our tripwires, written down before any outage:

• Indoor temperature holding in the high 90s despite the full routine (shade, wet skin, fans) means the house is no longer the safe place. We go to family with power, a cooling center, or a hotel, in that order. The radio plan and the family addresses already exist for exactly this decision.
• Heat illness signs in an adult: heavy sweating that suddenly stops, confusion, slurred speech, nausea, a racing pulse, or skin that is hot and dry. Confusion or hot dry skin is a 911 call, not a wait-and-see.
• In a baby or toddler: unusual sleepiness or floppiness, refusing to drink, far fewer wet diapers, skin that feels very hot, or flushed and dry, or crying with no tears. Any of those, we call the pediatrician or go in. Toddlers overheat faster than adults and complain later.

None of this replaces judgment. It replaces the 2 a.m. argument about whether it is really that hot, because the plan already decided.

The shopping list

What we are buying, in the order we are buying it. Everything from the layers above that we already own (tarp, mylar blankets, zip ties, stroller fan, propane, lanterns) is not on it.

Buy first, about $62:

Buy second, about $220:

Later, when the budget allows, about $55 to $80:

Core kit total: roughly $280 for the first two tiers, in a state where the power goes out in 95 degree heat every single year.

Sources: CDC guidance on electric fans and heat (fans alone do not prevent heat illness at high temperatures; wetting skin while using a fan improves cooling). Retailer listings checked November 1, 2026: Northern Tool (Frogg Toggs Mini Chilly Pad 6 pack, $10.99, in stock), Walmart (handheld misting fans, $10.69 to $15.43), Target (Pedialyte powder 8 count, $8.99; DripDrop 16 count at Target and via deal listings, $17.99; Pedialyte 24 count, $26.61), AMACOOL 20,000 mAh fan listings (about $40 to $50, up to 58 hours claimed on low), Geek Aire 16 inch fan manufacturer specifications (1,900 CFM, up to 24 hours claimed on low). Amazon does not allow automated price reads, so fan and thermometer prices are from retailer listings and manufacturer pages, and every price here should be re-checked at checkout. Runtime figures are manufacturer claims at the lowest speed; plan on roughly half.