Last night I had to make a late run to WalMart to get some extra oil for the generator and saw the store’s “hurricane” inventory had been depleted.

What was a large shelf of tarps a few days ago was mostly gone.

Hurricane Alex - WalMart Tarps

The flashlights? Except for the very expensive sets, they were sold out.

Hurricane Alex - WalMart Flashlights

The camping lights were all out and so was all of the propane.

Hurricane Alex - WalMart Camping Lamps

And you know things are getting bad when all the Ramen shelves are bare.

Hurricane Alex - WalMart Ramen

As I was leaving, the night shift workers were pulling palettes of inventory out to re-stock.

On a related note, if I was an inventory manager for WalMart and saw there were “emergency” items that nobody wanted to buy even in a hurricane situation, I would seriously reconsider keeping the item in stock at all.