A sudden winter storm and foot of snow last month left me without power for 48 hours.

It wasn’t lack of heat or missing the Olympics that fazed me. My biggest challenge was keeping my iPhone charged. With more people jettisoning land lines in favor of wireless service, it struck me that most won’t be prepared for a few days without power. Just how will you keep your phone charged when the lights go out? I have a few recommendations.

The easiest way is to use your car. Most of us have car charging cables. If you don’t mind using some gas, you can get a full charge by running your car for an hour or two.

Or you can buy a power inverter that plugs into your car’s 12-volt DC power outlet (what we used to call the cigarette lighter) and turns it into 120-volt AC power suitable for charging a laptop or running small electronics or appliances.

There also are plenty of rechargeable battery solutions that you charge by using a power outlet or USB port and then transfer that power to your phone. This type of battery is used in products like Mophie Juice Pack Air or Powerstick from EcoSol. I’m also reviewing several iPhone battery cases from SaFPWR, which came in handy over the weekend.

You do have to charge these initially, but keeping one ready to use is pretty painless. If you’re really without electricity, you’ll only get one charge.

One easy solution is to find a phone charger that runs on AA batteries. I found one at a local drugstore. It’s made by Energizer, is called Energi to Go and sells for $20.

It came with tips to charge micro USB and mini USB, which covers a lot of phones, but without an adapter, it won’t help with the iPhone. Lucky for me, one tip that ships with the Powerstick is for the iPhone and it works with the Energi to Go.

The bottom line on charging your iPhone in an electrical outage: Go with your car charger before switching to one using AA batteries.