People in the South don’t get snow very often, so it’s a big deal. Schools and businesses may preemptively close if there’s a forecast of even an inch of snow on the ground. This isn’t panic — we simply don’t have the infrastructure for it. Why would the cities invest in many snow plows when they’d get used only once every few years?

Many of us enjoy the snow, because it is such a rare occurrence. I live in the South, and we recently got several inches (of a snow and sleet mixture), and the schools were closed for a week. We got to do sledding, throwing snowballs, making snow ice cream (if you don’t know, try it, seriously), building snowmen (or trying to, depending on the texture), and just enjoying how it looks different.

But there is something we do wrong, and we know it. We panic buy. This funny parody song (below) highlights that. Once snow is in the forecast, people buy all the milk and bread. Even though we may be snowed in for just a couple of days (because it’ll be 50 degrees before you know it), that doesn’t matter. We must have enough milk and bread to last weeks, even if we’ve never been snowed in that long. And even though it would make more sense to stock up on non-perishable foods, that doesn’t matter. It’s just part of the experience. People joke about it, but then they do it anyway. Friends shared pictures of the grocery stores, and the whole bread aisle would be empty. People even bought up the yucky expensive bread that’s topped with sticks and rocks.