The East Coast Is Frantically Hoarding Pre-Storm Food and Booze Again

If there's one thing we've learned from Michael Keaton's masterful performance in the 1998 cinematic gem that is Jack Frost, it's that "a snowdad is better then no dad." (We also learned what George Clooney would look like as an ungodly sentient snowman, but that's a tale for another time.)

Well, there will be no shortage of proverbial snow dads this week. But as most of America's eastern seaboard braces itself for this year's first potential mega blizzard—dubbed Winter Storm Jonas—we all seem to be fearing shortages worthy of early-Bolshevik Siberia in the dead of winter.

Bare shelves everywhere. Due to #blizzard2016 anticipation, local grocery store seems like '80s Soviet Union market. pic.twitter.com/2FVkyFl2U4

— Ajit Pai (@AjitPaiFCC) January 21, 2016

According to reports, pre-storm hoarding has already reached ungodly levels of hysteria-laden lunacy, leaving grocery store shelves pretty much bare. It seems that shoppers have once again taken to their local grocery stores in a frenzy, buying everything in sight, instead of thinking rationally and recognizing that a little snow probably won't starve us all to death. Why is it that Americans freak at the first flake?

Perhaps we're not crazy. Fall 2015 was, after all, the warmest autumn on record for the contiguous 48 states since record-keeping of weather began in the US in 1895. This trend could explain why people have gone bat-shit crazy at the first announcement that snow was in the forecast. Maybe we've forgotten what snow is like—and that we can survive it.

Think it might snow? #BreadandMilk pic.twitter.com/kdl3ljtPdW — vezalo_33 (@vezalo_33) January 22, 2016

And maybe we've forgotten that countless services will likely be still delivering throughout the deluge, and that the restaurants in our area will only be too happy to send a hapless delivery dude out in sub-zero weather, all to bring us our pathetic order of half a dozen samosas, one Diet Coke, and two pieces of chocolate cake—no, make it three.

Shelves are empty at grocery stores in DC #blizzard2016 pic.twitter.com/7dTRpiChMt

— Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) January 21, 2016

Perchance we have pushed out of our minds the fact that we can in fact pull on a pair of snow boots and actually step foot outside—and make our own harmonica-playing snow dad, or buy some food—even after winter precipitation occurs.

Well, Lexington, we've done it. The groceries are officially out of milk. #snowpocalypse must be on its way. #letitsnow #milkandbread #willitstorm A photo posted by Kathleen Burke (@kathleenmburke) on Jan 21, 2016 at 6:56pm PST

It certainly seems that we've all got a case of climate-change-induced amnesia, because what else would explain the fact that Americans have taken to our grocery stores with a desperation known only to tweens competing for the last few tickets to a Taylor Swift concert?

Can you predict the weather in #Pennsylvania by the bread aisle? @PennsylvaniaPro #blizzard2016 pic.twitter.com/lzt8stMZBN

— Eatright PA (@eatrightPA) January 21, 2016

Beer distributors are working overtime. Liquor stores are reporting huge crowds. And social media users are documenting barren markets and obliterated stock in stores from Boston to Washington, DC and beyond.

Washington, D.C., is in a full-blown bread-and-milk freakout over coming snowstorm. https://t.co/TEXKOj4TYh pic.twitter.com/BVwcfjnc7w — Jim Roberts (@nycjim) January 21, 2016

Perhaps we're all just displaying tribal behavior—an inborn need to nest. After all, it's certainly possible that we humans are programmed with a deep-seeded, quasi-instinctual urge to lay food in our caves at the first hint of bad weather. As soon as the call of the wild goes out—we're talking about those TV news blizzard graphics, accompanied, of course, by the menacing musical theme—we all head like lemmings to the nearest bodega.

"To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction" #snowstorm and #BreadandMilk pic.twitter.com/BJgr9kjlZb — Maggie Jordan (@MaggieJordanACN) January 22, 2016

Will this storm be "life-threatening" and "the storm of a century" as local AccuWeather predicts? Who knows. We're pretty sure, however, that the 2 percent milk and whole-wheat bread you fought your neighbors for, tooth and nail, is not going to mean the difference between life and death this weekend. Snowdad says so.