Last-second prep for first big storm
People hit stores for needed supplies
People hurrying around Sunday afternoon as the first flakes started to fly schlepped 50-pound bags of salt and carried shovels out of Home Depot and Lowe’s, while bread aisles went barren at area grocery stores.
“Just want to make sure I’m ready,” said David Polk, propping up a bag of salt over his shoulder outside a Quincy Home Depot. “I hope it’s not too bad. You never know.”
Ken Grant picked up a shovel from the Centre Street Home Depot, replacing one that has been worn out over the years, he said.
“They say it won’t be too much on the coast, but it’s hard to tell,” Grant said, adding that people need to watch out for black ice.
Moments later in the Home Depot parking lot, four men lifted a snowblower into the back of a truck, as people raced home before the storm revved up.
At the Lowe’s on Lincoln Street in Worcester, Derek Cutting and store employee Ernie Stathis worked together to load a snowblower onto a truck.
Cutting, a Paxton native who now lives in the Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific Ocean, said he bought the snowblower for his sisterin-law. She has been shoveling the family’s driveway since Cutting’s brother got injured a couple years ago, and Cutting said he wanted to help save her from shoveling.
The first snow of the season was coming in two back-to-back blasts.
The initial snow was hitting Sunday evening into early Monday morning, followed by sleet and rain.
The second batch of snow was expected to arrive during Monday afternoon’s commute and last through Tuesday morning.
Meteorologists were predicting 12-to-18 inches of snow in some interior parts of Massachusetts, while Cape Cod looked like it’d be clear of any snow accumulation.
The Merrimack Valley was in that 12-to-18 inch zone. That’s where many grocery store shoppers snapped photos of empty bread shelves — a tradition before a big storm hits.
“Insane at MB (Market Basket) at 8am,” a Twitter user wrote Sunday. “It was like people hadn’t eaten for days….and might not again.”