I live in the Seattle-area where we've been hit with some serious winter weather in the mountain passes, to the point that for a period of a few hours, there was practically no route to drive to a neighboring state, and the passes were closed for the better part of 72+ hours.
Even with that, and the rest of the aforementioned issues, I have had virtually no problem shopping for what I needed with some small changes, like buying a different brand of eggs or getting organic bananas. This was even after 2-3 days of mountain closures and the panic shopping that goes with that.
This seems to mainly be an issue with convenience - decades of excellent logistics have trained us to basically expect a store to always be in stock of a wide variety of perishables. It's no surprise that when something disrupts that finely-tuned machine, we have to deal with some small setbacks.
You live in a major metropolitan area full of warehouses and featuring a major west coast port. You weren't cut off from anything. Other states were cut off from you.
I mean, we also have a major deepwater port. It's not like inland Alaska here where shut down roads mean you're totally isolated.
In fact, just yesterday a new terminal came online with cranes that match the reach of Long Beach: https://www.nwseaportalliance.com/newsroom/ssa-marine-and-no... (This project was started in 2016, which is one answer to "why don't we just add more capacity to solve port traffic jams")
I live to the west of you out on the peninsula and we couldn't get milk for the past week and a half. As in there wasn't a single carton of milk anywhere in multiple stores. Curious if it's just smaller towns relying on distribution from the city, and getting cut off first or what. I figured Seattle would have had similar issues.
Even with that, and the rest of the aforementioned issues, I have had virtually no problem shopping for what I needed with some small changes, like buying a different brand of eggs or getting organic bananas. This was even after 2-3 days of mountain closures and the panic shopping that goes with that.
This seems to mainly be an issue with convenience - decades of excellent logistics have trained us to basically expect a store to always be in stock of a wide variety of perishables. It's no surprise that when something disrupts that finely-tuned machine, we have to deal with some small setbacks.