An Associated Press story tells how some folks in the Northeast are upset that they bought all sorts of supplies preparing for Hurricane Irene, which has come and gone, and now they are stuck with generators and sump pumps, batteries and bottled water, candles and crackers. Stores won’t take them back, and they have nowhere to put them.

It’s part of the human condition to buy, buy, buy when we know bad weather is on the way. We are convinced that folks who never drink milk or eat bread head to the store and stock up when they hear of a snowflake sneaking over the Alabama line somewhere. We are not used to snow and don’t know what else to do, so we stock provisions based on worst-case scenarios as if we will be snowbound for days.

The same principle appears to be at work here. Folks in Manhattan apartment buildings, who deal with snow every winter, don’t know what to do with hurricanes. So they reacted the same way we do with snow. One woman, who said she had one flashlight, bought 48 batteries at $3 each (seems a little high to us) and now doesn’t know what to do with them all since the power didn’t go out.

The puzzle is what she planned to do with them if the power did go out. Perhaps she should have bought 24 batteries and one more flashlight.

Give the crackers away to the hungry. Put the rest of that stuff in the back of a closet. Snow will show up in New York sometime this winter, and it will work just as well then.