Besides a genset ,food, water (which have year round applications), I have a few backup heaters with fuel. A backup means of cooking if you have an electric stove.

Rock Salt, if you wait till you need it, it'll be gone from the stores.  I buy in bulk and keep it my garage in a plastic trash can, still in the bags so I can dispense it easier.  I also keep a plastic can filled with it in my car so those times I'm in the parking spot from hell, rather than do the old spin and pray, I can drop some, have a smoke, and pull right out.  

Keep in mind, what takes things out in the more southern states in a blizzard, isn't the snow or ice.  Its the trees falling.  That's what takes the power out and blocks roads.  This is why axillary home heat is a very important thing.  Now this a topic that can go multiple directions with pages of recommendations.    What I will add here is if you are considering anything but whole home heat, whatever area heat you use will include where your pipes are or you'll have bigger problems when things thaw.  

My usual recommendation for folks just starting out for backup heat is a Kerosene Tower.  It has a low capital cost to get started and the fuel is easily stored The towers put out enough heat to keep even a good sized house above freezing in most conditions and with frugal use 20 gallons of fuel (four 5 gallon cans), you can get about five days use.  Once you cover whole house above freezing then you can concentrate on little room heaters like the Heater Buddy or smaller kerosene heaters etc.  

Keep in mind, other options like wood burning stoves or hopper pellet/coal stoves, though very good options, are more of a lifestyle choice.  They require more fore planning and typically more labor.  Just keep in mind, as in all things if you wait till you need it, odds are its too late.  Gas stoves are a nice just in case option, however other than those that run off the little change it every so many hours camping cans, they usually involve a high capital cost, price of stove, piping, etc. and in extreme cases need to have a tank brought in and then have to deal with frequency of fill issues.  

In all my years, just once has a blizzard taken things out services for a long period.  That was the Blizzard of 93' which we still talk about here.  On the other hand, more mundane but way more often is the damn Central heat breaks down.   When that happens, you have a lot more options on not only cost but what to do if you aren't rushed to gotta have it fixed right now or everything freezes.  

A lot of folks think of needing this or that in case of blizzard but one of the most common unanticipated needs is water.  Forgetting for a minute you let your pipes freeze and burst if enough of your neighbors do it, that's enough to shut you down too.  Also on the mundane duh level is the Redneck Refrigerator.  I know it sounds duh? but you would be surprised how many folks I've seen over the years, the power goes in winter and their food spoils in their fridge or freezer when all they had to do is move the food outside on a porch or patio.  Its nice to have porch thermometers.  One of our favorites is a mount on the window digital you can read from inside where its warm.  

One of the most used things I have when there's a weather event and the power goes is a battery operated TV.  Even in these days of smart phones, its still a go to.  Waking up the morning after the blizzard to hear both of our snow plows were in a ditch somewhere was entertaining but it also told us, we weren't getting out anytime soon.  It really is true a picture is worth a 1,000 words and more often than not while the dimwit girl on TV is saying "Should be OK", you'll find yourself going "No, that's going to take a while."  Live picture, live radar, etc. live is just better.  It also is something that can be shared to calm the whole family down.  Now to keep in on the mundane, if you have a car, you have a way to charge DC gear.  You'd be surprised years ago during a Hurricane in apartments how many people I had to tell such mundane things to.  I've learned, they aren't stupid.  People just go all deer in the headlights naturally when taken out of their comfort zones and simple things like use the creek water to flush your toilet become revelations.  

Now let's be honest here, only a fool is going to stay in his house and freeze to death.  People will adapt and do what's needed.  What we do by preparing is not as much insure our survival but insure we don't get that deer in the headlights syndrome by buying us some time to think.  I've seen it first hand.  Unprepared, peoples brains are being twisted every direction at once.  Nobody wants to be the guy who did nothing as everything goes to hell around them but I'm here to tell you its just as bad to be the guy that jumps without thinking.  If a person in a hurry after a blizzard ended up in a dtch trying to go buy batteries when he had a battery charger right in front of him the whole time, he wouldn't be the first, that's for sure.  When I was younger, I use to take my truck and go rescue people from ditches during bad snow events.  (I was mainly delivering meds to snowed in elderly folks.)  I can easily say well over 90% of the people I had pulled out of ditches shouldn't the road and could not have been had they taken just minimal precautions and not panicked or saw it as some great adventure.   I've told folks many times in such events its not the white snow that scares me, its the white knuckles,  those knuckles white from the pressure on the steering wheels and those bulged darting eyes behind them.  We have a lot of control over our lives but very little over others.  

One of my pet peeves here on the form is the impracticality of "Hermit Survival", the idea you can be all isolated and let the world go to hell around you.   Nothing is more proof of how wrong that is than a prolonged weather event.  You have something others don't and I swear its like magic how folks figure it out or find out.  During Hurrican Alicia my neighbors found I had a way to flush my toilet and they were lined out to the street until I told them go the creek and flush your own which they thanked me like I was a genius or something.  Then that line of help me went to a line of advise me.  During the 93' Blizzard, I ran extension cords to my neighbors and gave them limited gen time to do this or that.  Rather than have folks, quote "Visiting",  I helped others with heaters etc.  Others I simply has to say "no" but what I never did was not be sympathetic or not be willing to give advice on how to solve their delima.  Most of the time by far, its that deer in the headlight thing and all folks need is someone to focus them.  

After all despite how popular it is on survival circles a loss of services is not the end of the world.  We don't get to become instant Rambos or justify criminality.  Its just the start of doing things differently is all.  

Tj