Flashlight shelves cleared out

Interesting thing I noticed.

I noticed at my local Walmart and Target in Houston, their flashlight shelves were cleared of most low-end lights.

The supposed hurricane that hit Houston last week, It ended up being just a storm, not a hurricane. I think that's what caused people to go to Walmart and Target and get flashlights.

Ever seen this happen in your neighborhood before?

I work for a grocery store in my local area and whenever a massive storm looms during winter or when power outages are reported on TV, we sell household candles and our cheap energizer flashlights (we usually only stock max 5 at a time, and they are 2xAA incans) by the bucket load. Generally the energizer lights never shift until then.

When I lived in NC, all the local stores would sell all their lights before hurricanes. Usually cheap lights sold first. When Floyd hit, the only lights left at Target were mags...

Same issues with food, actually. You could always tell when a storm was coming--the bread, milk, tp, and peanut butter would all be gone, as well as the bottled water.

Yes that is typical here in Florida when a hurricane approaches. Lots of things begin to disappear two to three days ahead of a impending storm if the region is in the 3 day forecast cone of a cyclone. Things like D cells, AA cells, propane disposable tanks, camping stoves, candles, bread, bottle water, can goods go fast... and many gasoline stations run out of gas. Moral of the story is don't wait until the National Hurricane center starts issuing advisories. Get your stuff early in the season.

This is primarily how I became a Flashaholic because in the past I waited too long and now I am always prepared and I generally start at the beginning of the season in June to make sure I have plenty of everything.

Two years ago in 2006, a year after I went through Katrina and Wilma (Lost power for 8 days combined in 2005) I started researching lanterns and flashlights for maximum brightness and run time and that is when I cam across this site. It also marked the first year that I started 'hoarding' lanterns, flashlights, batteries and the like well before there were any storms in the Atlantic. Now I am hooked.

You know it's weird how this happens, I have never been to a house before that didn't at least have some lights. Why do people go out and buy more? When I'm in most people's garages / work rooms / basements I seems to always find the flashlight collection, it always consists of about 7 or so crappy 2D plastic lights and one or two 6V lanterns. It's like when a storm hit's the people go out and buy a light, don't use, put it down stairs and when another storm hits they just buy a new one and add it to the ever increasing collection. Why not just stock up on batteries? As cheap as most of these lights are they are still fairly robust and reliable one would last the average home owner a life time, considering the limited use they see. What I guess happens is that humans just like putting things off to the last second / never getting ready for something, then when time runs out they get all hyped up and go insane and buy everything when they don't need it, only to go back to their unprepared ways after the specified event. Like how security got all super reinforced after 911 and then a few years later it started to slacken again. The treat of a terrorist attack is more likely down the road then right after the last one, but people get lazy and seem to forget how important a specific event was and just go about their lives again lazily until their carelessness creates another moment of unprepared panic and the cycle continues.

Yup adrenaline wears off too quickly. Like an elastic band, we go back to our original shape too easily.

The only thing I might need to buy, flashlight wise, would be batteries. But I keep a healthy inventory as it is. Just a few sets per light I think is enough.

Even if you use rechargables, having some primaries is a good idea.

Walmart here had 25% off batteries before hurricane season.