Illinois, This Is How Long Your Food Can Last In The Fridge Without Power

Monday night's storms brought strong winds and thousands of power outages.

For many parts of the Quad Cities, stoplights are out and power companies are working hard to restore power to those affected by what has been classified as a derecho. It was a nasty, eventful Monday night. MidAmerican says that they expect to have most Quad Cities outages restored by 7:00 a.m. on Wednesday, July 17th and all restored by 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday.

A lot of us went to bed and woke up this morning with no power (and then a few took to Facebook to complain about it). It's inconvenient for sure, but what about the stuff in your fridge?

How Long Food Can Last In Your Fridge Without Power

If you've been meaning to do a fridge cleanout, good news: you'll do it sooner rather than later. If you just did your grocery shopping for the week, I have bad news. The USDA says that your fridge can keep food safe to eat for 4 hours during a power outage.

As severe as the storms last night got, that's not very long.

If you are or were without power for 4 hours or more, they advise you to throw out meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and leftovers. Eating warm food that should be cold is a great way to get food poisoning, trust me.

Luckily, the USDA has a handy dandy little chart on what to keep or throw away if you were without power for a couple of hours. It's also worth noting that a freezer can hold a safe temperature for about 48 hours (24 hours if it's half-full and the door stays closed).