Hurricane Ike is responsible for the largest Internet outage since 2003. The outage spreads across 9 states with the heaviest outages in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania and has left thousands without access to their emails. Even the Blackberry network was knocked out.

Over at the MailWise Email Security Blog they make a very good point:

The lesson here is not to go running for canned goods and candles. It’s that when bad storms hit, they can go into regions that you least expect them. Make sure you have a backup plan for accessing email if there’s an outage. Once the storm hits, the window is already closed.

If there’s a storm headed toward or even just near your area, be prepared! Don’t think your cellphone will be enough. If power outages are severe chances are it won’t work-those big towers depend on electricity too. Think about investing in a good generator or UPS for your email server and network. If your ISP is affected you may not be able to access new emails but at least you’ll have access to saved and archived ones, and you never know when you’ll need them!