"My closest Costco is near the Pentagon"
My condolences

Indeed.

Thanks, Paul, for the update on your New Jersey community. Last night I went to a supermarket (also near the Pentagon) and bottled water had disappeared, along with sugar and flour. TP was depleted but not completely gone.

They were well-stocked with eggs-bacon-milk and everything else, it seemed.

Thankfully, they had my favorite coffee.

Today, much of the area is impassable due to the Marine Corps Marathon, so I'm already sheltering-in.

Good luck everyone.


.

This excerpt will get a lot of eye-rolling laughs. What a cliche:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/hurr...14_story_1.html


Customers took up to a half hour to find parking on Saturday at the Georgetown Safeway, where bottled water was gone by late afternoon and two shoppers argued over the last box of elbow pasta.



.

I can hear them now, "You take it, I have enough." "No, I insist, you were here first." "Please, I'm not even Italian, you take the pasta and I'll even throw in a jar of Marinara Sauce." "Okay, if you're sure, but I make my own sauce from scratch."

I wonder if that's how the conversation went, people in DC are so concerned and outgoing...

There's DC. And there's Georgetown.

I'm in a different zip code.


:-)

lol Yep, folks in Georgetown even know the difference between a Bordeaux and Boone's Farm.

Good luck to all weathering the storm. We are having an October Santa Anna here in SOCAL. Warm and dry during the day, cool and crisp at night -- really nice.

YUP!

Being prepared is a wonderful thing!

To be honest, given our storm predictions are pretty much 2-4 inches of rain, with wind gusts to 50 mph ... I think of this as Santa Anas with some rain.

Old habits die hard

Folks headed to the stores to shop I hope you're making a list of things you need on hand before the next storm. Convenience shopping this close to landfall gets tenuous and some of the participants get sketchy.

Keep up on your prescription meds and you'll avoid pharmacies. I know a compounding pharmacist who sees a lot of desperate demands for oxycodone and vicodin on the eve of any storm. Why enter sketchy situations...

Out here in the PNW we have the M7.7 quake off the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) north of Vancouver BC, with a swarm of dozens of M4-M5 after shocks. We're lucky its a sparsely inhabited area ~550 miles away from Seattle; someday this will happen off the Pacific coast of Portland or maybe Forks, WA. Mentally I've been taking in the scenario since last night and I can confirm, assuming we make it through the first quake all our preps will come in handy, and there won't be any need let alone opportunity to run to the store for supplies - we'll be on our own for 7+ days without resupply. And all those after shocks will be raising the anxiety level and possibly causing additional damage to homes and infrastructure. Things would be fairly intense around here - a need for calmer minds. A lot like you folks out in the path of H. Sandy.

This afternoon I'll hold a short demo for family on how and where to turn off water and gas to the house, and will verify no one has pillaged our wet and cold weather emergency gear - because last night's BC quake took place in driving rain and 45 degrees F, which would chill us to the bone if our primary shelter was set ablaze by a broken gas line.

Hunker down folks, Godspeed and best of luck to you all.

Actually, that as the scene trying to get into a local grocery store this morning Everyone waited for the other person to go first and nobody got anywhere for a couple of minutes. It was almost comical.

Different story by the time I got to the check-out. It wasn't crazy busy and the lines weren't more than two or three deep, but people the were testy. I thought the woman who blocked the area between the registers and the aisles while she waited in line (and with two closed check-out lines beside her, where she she have waited) was going to start a riot.

No noticable food shortages though. Even the road salt was normally priced. I found it interesting that the store didn't even pull out their winter stuff (i.e. shovels, salt, etc) so that it was front and center. It was almost hidden. They were having a "stock up" sale though but I can't imagine this pending storm caused it.

No noticable line-ups at the gas station and prices were steady at $1.13/ltr.

Things seemed pretty normal for a rainy Sunday here, except that it's about 5C outside (with a light wind, that's about 1C) and we're just getiing light rain. I got some perishables and some extra canned goods, since I was going to refill a prescription anyway. I was in and out in a normal amount of time, and actually faster than I excepted for a rainy day.