People panic prior to the arrival of a hurricane and rush off to the market for bottled water. The key that I think people miss is that anything can happen to your water supply at any time, not just during a severe weather event.
In that light, I do the following to ensure myself an adequate supply of drinking water during short duration emergencies. The generally accepted rule of thumb is one (1) gallon of water per person, per day.
I maintain an inventory of eight (8) gallon jugs of spring water all year long. Each month I buy one (1) gallon of spring water at the supermarket. This gallon replaces the oldest jug in my backup water supply which I promptly use for drinking water. In this way, no one jug is more than 8 months old.
When I do have an opportunity to ‘stock up’ on water as we have an opportunity during the early stages of tropical weather preparedness, I have two (2) 5-gallon Coleman water jugs that are kept in readiness. Simply filling each of these with tap water provides me with 10 days of drinking water as well.
AND no standing in line at the supermarket!
