>>1076221>I still don't understand why people stock up on food and milk though, especially if the ice only lasts a day or 2.It's two or three different things.
For suburban people, the issue is even if the ice is gone after 2 days, power may be out all week. There might also be a run on the stores if people get roof collapses or their power goes out and their refrigerators spoil because either they're keeping warm some other way, or because it gets slightly too warm during the day to keep everything cold.
Another case are rural folks who live an hour or more out of town and may never see a salt truck or a plow and their power lines might be broken in 10 different places between the plant and their farmhouse in the country. People like this already "stock up". They might make one trip into town per month and get all their month's shopping done at once. In winter, doubly so. For all they know at the end of their month's supplies they might get iced in AND lose power, so they stock up a reserve that should last another month or two.
Plus they often have animals to care for that are vulnerable to the cold. No power = no heat lamps in the chicken coops or goat hutches or dog kennels outside. So they need supplies for sick or injured or hypothermic animals as well. The problem isn't so bad that they can justify the expense of generators and stocks of gasoline like some country folk up north might do.
Thirdly, there's no guarantee that the bad weather will only last a day or two. Occasionally we'll have an ice storm that knocks power out for thousands and closes a few roads with downed trees, then it'll warm up to 50F for a day or two, then another cold front will come in on top of that and cause a tornado or thunder storms. Sometimes you get back to back severe weather and the store is inaccessible for a week or more straight.
(Fourth, I think people here secretly like disasters. Even non-doomsday lunies still like to "prep" just for the fun of it.)
