In the ultra-Orthodox communities near Monsey in upstate New York, stores are swamped with anxious shoppers.
“Basically if you go to the gas stations you can think we are now in the 1973 embargo,” said Yossi Gestetner, an Orthodox political blogger… ‘If you go a grocery you can think it’s a Friday afternoon, an hour before the store’s closing,” Gestetner said, referring to the pre-Shabbat rush. “And the hardware stores make you think it’s erev Pesach,” Gestetner added, referring to the shopping season before the start of the Passover holiday.
Gestetner added that there are far fewer Orthodox Jews in the Catskills now than when Irene hit last summer, as the Catskills vacation season has ended.