People throughout the region expect their grocery stores’ parking lots to be packed, checkout lines to be long, and milk coolers to be depleted right before a snowstorm.
Worried that they’ll be snowed in, shoppers stockpile on bread, eggs and toilet paper. People fill their fridges and pack their pantries. Many buy far more supplies than they’ll actually use before a plow clears the streets within a few days.
There are reasons people feel the urge to overprepare, said Dr. Abigail Schlesinger, clinical chief of child and adolescent psychiatry and integrated care at UPMC Western Psychiatric and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
“There’s an element of trying to control the uncontrollable,” she said.
People are inundated with news headlines and weather alerts, some offering contradictory analyses of how bad the weather may get.
Plus, some people are wary about the fact that they can’t dictate how much snow falls or whether their power goes out.
But they can control how much food they buy or how many emergency supplies they have on hand.
“When people are really anxious or aren’t sure how to control the uncontrollable, sometimes they may overdo it in their preparation,” Schlesinger said, reiterating that some preparations are healthy and necessary.
Panic buying
Monica Cwynar, a licensed clinical social worker with Thriveworks in Pittsburgh, said some people may also have a fear of scarcity.
They may worry that supplies could run out — particularly if they’re thinking back to the early days of the covid-19 pandemic when toilet paper was hard to come by — and feel the need to buy all they can.
Cwynar said that can lead to people thinking, “I want to make sure that I have everything I and my family need.”
Such panic buying can be contagious, said Dr. Alicia Kaplan, an adult psychiatrist who serves as the medical director for the Center of Adult Anxiety and OCD at Allegheny Health Network.
If people see their neighbors stockpiling, lugging heaps of grocery bags into the house, they may feel the need to do the same.
“That panic can spread quickly,” Kaplan said.
Some people fall into what Kaplan called “emotional reasoning,” where people make decisions based on emotions, rather than objective facts. It may help to try to push fear or anxiety aside and think logically about how much food is really necessary to get through a few days of inclement weather.
Winter anxiety
“I’m used to talking about winter depression, winter blues,” she said. “But winter anxiety is another item to talk about.”
Kaplan said there’s a distinction between being responsibly prepared and “having such catastrophic thoughts that we have to buy out the store.”
Cwynar said people should try to contemplate what they actually need, rather than buying up anything and everything they can load into a shopping cart.
“How many rolls of toilet paper do you need?” she said. “How many loaves of bread and gallons of milk?”
Some people may feel powerless at the thought of being trapped indoors, possibly without power, while roads could become impassable.
Some of Cwynar’s patients started canceling appointments days before the snow started, she said. Another scrapped a telehealth appointment that wouldn’t have even required him to leave the house, citing the forecast.
“The fear’s that real,” she said.
Experts offered some advice for people who feel panicked at the thought of a storm.
Try turning off the television and putting down the phone for a while if the barrage of weather alerts, weather-related social media posts and news stories about snow are too much, Schlesinger said.
Talk to family or friends. Eat and sleep well. Get some exercise, she recommended.
Cwynar suggested grounding techniques, like breathing exercises.
She also recommended that people have entertainment lined up to keep them engaged in something during the storm, even if the power goes out.
“Make sure you plan activities you can do that don’t require electronics,” she said. “Find some good trusty books to read or some magazines, or get some board games.”
People who live alone may want to consider a “snow party,” where they get together with some friends and get snowed in together to ward off loneliness.
Doing something enjoyable can take some of the dread out of a snow day, Kaplan said, pitching ideas ranging from building a snowman to enjoying a warm cup of tea.
Schlesinger said long-term preparedness may help people avoid the last-minute panic-buying tendencies. Once the storm passes, she said, consider ways to prepare well in advance of the next one to avoid a mad dash to the store or a bout of anxiety from the weather channel.
Experts said people who feel too anxious or take preparations too far may want to seek mental health help.
If worry about a snowstorm or an impulse to focus on preparing for it gets in the way of daily life or hinders a person’s ability to complete tasks or connect with family and friends, Schlesinger suggested seeking out support. People can talk to their primary care provider or a counselor.
“We all have our own vulnerabilities and strengths,” Kaplan said. “I don’t think people should be upset with themselves if this is one thing that really gets to them.”
