so we had that crazy windstorm that knocked out power for like 3 days and cell towers were down too. i had my ht and mobile rig but honestly felt pretty useless since i didnt really know who to talk to or what frequencies to monitor. our local club talks about emergency communication but we never really practice it you know? just wondering what others have done to actually prepare for this stuff beyond just having the radios

Yeah this is something our club struggled with too until we started doing monthly nets specifically for this. We pick a scenario like power outage or severe weather and practice reporting procedures, health and welfare traffic, that kind of thing. Also got connected with our county emergency management office - they actually want to know what ham resources are available. The ARRL has some good materials on emergency communication but nothing beats actually doing it. Maybe suggest your club start doing some tabletop exercises?

oh man i remember that storm! same thing happened to me, had all this gear and no clue what to do with it when it actually mattered. after that i started monitoring the local repeaters more regularly just to learn who the regular emergency coordinators are. turns out theres a whole network of people doing this stuff but they dont advertise it much. also learned that having battery backup is one thing but having enough battery backup for several days is totally different