The Harris Teeter at Cotswold looked like a Charlotte snow day: The milk section was half empty, and all the water shelves were wiped out.
A worker at the Trader Joe’s in Midtown said the store received 72 cases of spring water the night before, and that they sold out in 30 minutes.
Charlotte’s most popular grocery store, Harris Teeter, has increased deliveries of water and other supplies to its stores in the storm’s path, spokeswoman Danna Robinson said.
No one covers what is happening in our community better than we do.
3 grocer, is sending additional shipments of water, food, batteries and other items to its stores that are in the hurricane’s path.
By NOAA Publix has also seen an increase in foot traffic this week as customers prepare, but stores are still stocked with essentials, spokeswoman Kimberley Reynolds said.
“Items such as water, ice, snacks, bread, soup, batteries and flashlights are selling the most.
Aside from grocery stores, other retailers are making sure they’re ready for customers preparing for the storm.
Lowe’s activated its 24/7 emergency command center in Wilkesboro to track the storm, and shipped more than 325 truckloads of product to the North and South Carolina coast in anticipation of the storm.
Experts say the frenzy over buying bottled water, however, may be overblown.

Telemundo Puerto Rico Puerto Rican government officials resorted to mass finger-pointing after CBS News recently reported that thousands of water bottles were abandoned on the taxiway of a naval base in Ceiba, Puerto Rico.
In a Facebook post written in Spanish, Thomas Rivera Schatz, Puerto Rico’s Senate president, called out Wanda Vázquez, the island’s secretary of the Department of Justice.
"The discovery of a shipment of boxes containing potable water going to waste out in the open on Ceiba’s naval base possibly did not even provoke an investigation from the Department of Justice,” Rivera Schatz wrote on his Facebook page.
That’s double the amount of deaths the illness caused in Puerto Rico in 2016.
“This week, the people have massively resorted to buying potable water before the possible passage of a tropical storm that could become a hurricane, while there [on the naval base] waste thousand and thousands of bottles of water," the Senator leader added.
Puerto Rico’s Administrator of the General Services Administration, Ottmar Chávez, and Secretary of the Department of Public Safety Héctor Pesquera offered explanations about the situation.
“The Federal Agency for Emergency Management reported that it had an excess of bottled water in April 2018, and GSA made an application to take custody that was approved and executed upon in May 2018 through the U.S. GSA Surplus Property program,” Chávez explained during a press conference.
“Based on those complaints, we contacted FEMA to return the water to the federal GSA inventory,” the GSA administrator continued.
“If we had the water supply available since January, why was it not declared until months later, when the bottles of water could possibly be contaminated due to having them exposed outside of a warehouse for so long?,” he asked.
“The question is should these containers have been kept in some sort of warehouse or storage facility and if they distributed potentially contaminated water?” Ultimately, the governor believes FEMA is responsible for causing the water to possibly spoil.

A year after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, millions of bottled water have been discovered unused on a island runway New photos have revealed millions of water bottles intended for survivors of Hurricane Maria sitting on a runway in Ceiba, Puerto Rico, more than a year after the storm hit the island.
The photos were taken by Abdiel Santana of the United Forces of Rapid Action agency of the Puerto Rican Police and raise questions regarding the federal government’s response to the deadly storm.
The water bottles were delivered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), but it is unclear why they were not distributed to residents and how they have been left sitting on the runway for a year.
Marty Bahamonde, director of disaster operations at FEMA, confirmed that FEMA delivered the water but said that the agency does not track specific shipments, as reported by CBS News.
While it is unclear why the water was not distributed, it also is unknown why the bottles have not been claimed as excess inventory and reported to the General Services Administration in Puerto Rico (GSO).
The news comes two weeks after the U.S. government raised the official Hurricane Maria death toll from 64 to 2,975, a number that is largely attributed to a lack of supplies in the storm’s wake.
The bottled water news broke on the same day President Donald Trump called his administration’s response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico “an incredible, unsung success,” during a briefing on incoming Hurricane Florence, as reported by CNN.
BREAKING: What may be millions of water bottles.
meant for victims of Hurricane Maria, have been sitting on a runway in Ceiba, Puerto Rico, since last year, according to @FEMA, which confirmed the news to me, late tonight, after pictures, posted today on social media, went viral.
pic.twitter.com/jidGJAvCyJ — David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) September 12, 2018

At least a thousand pallets of water bottles, meant for Hurricane Maria survivors, were left to rot under the Puerto Rican sun.
That is what Angelo Cruz Ramos, the mayor of Ceiba, told ABC News about what happened to thousands and thousands of water bottles that are sitting on the tarmac at the former naval base, Roosevelt Roads.
Cruz Ramos did not know the water was there and only found out when the images, posted to Facebook on Sept. 11, went viral, he said.
The area is a restricted zone, so he is not been able to approach it.
Because the bottled water has been under the sun for months, all the water is contaminated and is not suitable for consumption, Cruz Ramos said.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency confirmed to ABC News that the water was purchased by the federal agency and was determined to be a part of a surplus of supplies in April.
Puerto Rico’s General Services Administration said back in May that the agency received around 20,000 pallets of water through a federal government program to distribute excess supplies, the agency said in a statement to ABC News.
The GSA are working with FEMA and the island’s department of health to perform water tests on what they got from the federal government, the GSA said.
They added that they will be returning the water to the federal government.
Because there were supply planes arriving at airport in Ceiba hundreds of times after the storm – off loading food and water, he wouldn’t know when this water actually arrived on that tarmac, he said.

CEIBA, Puerto Rico — The stockpile of bottled water stretches down an unused runway in Ceiba.
Case after case, pallet piled upon pallet, blue tarps and plastic glinting in the sun.
Federal officials commandeered the area in the far east of the island last fall as a staging ground, collecting the water and containers full of blue tarps to patch damaged and destroyed roofs in surrounding neighborhoods.
And there the supplies sat.
Ottmar Chavez, now administrator of Puerto Rico’s General Services Administration, said FEMA reported that it had about 20,000 pallets of bottled water in excess in May this year, before Chavez was appointed.
His agency claimed the water, intending to deliver it where it was needed.
"In light of this, we have been in contact with FEMA and the Department of Health to test the water inventory received by the federal agency.
We are going to return those waters," he said.
"The time and heat has made it bad," he added.
Puerto Rico now says 2,975 people died on the island because of the storm.

Hundreds of thousands of bottled water are still sitting at a Puerto Rico airport nearly a year after hurricane Maria.
Abdiel Santana, a photographer working for a Puerto Rican state police agency took the picture.
“[…] almost a million boxes of water that were never delivered to the villages.
Is there anyone who can explain this?” Reportedly, FEMA acknowledged to CBS News on Wednesday that the bottles were brought inland in 2017 in the wake of the hurricane and that they were turned over to “central government.” So far it is still unclear on who is responsible for the wasted water.
The New York Post reports, celebrity chef José Andrés, who reportedly, brought a crew of volunteers to help feed victims of Maria in the wake of the storm, is seeking answers.
He called for an “official independent investigation” into what happened to the stash of drinking water.
“My teams knew about it but first they will say, ‘no we can not use them,’ months later water was no good for human consumption,” he tweeted.
“We were ‘buying’ water because they wouldn’t give it to us.” Andrés did not specify who “they ” were.
Since Hurricane Maria, it has been revealed the initial death toll of 64 was incorrect.
Click play below for more on this story.

PUERTO RICO (WKOW) — Possibly thousands of bottles of water that were sent by FEMA to aid those impacted by Hurricane Maria, sit wasted on a Puerto Rican runway after local leaders say they became contaminated.
The images went viral on Facebook on September 11.
Local officials said the water cannot be used since it sat under the sun for months and is now contaminated.
Critics say it’s another example of the U.S. government’s poor response in the aftermath of Maria.
"Obviously, our thoughts are with a lot of the hardworking folks in FEMA and in governors’ offices across the coastal states that are worried right now.
But I don’t think Puerto Rico was some great success, but I think we need to do more oversight to look at how FEMA can get better over time and hopefully they’ll perform this weekend," said Senator Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) as he spoke with CNN’s Jake Tapper.
"The job that FEMA and law enforcement and everybody did working along with the governor in Puerto Rico I think was tremendous.
I think Puerto Rico was incredible, unsung success," he said from the Oval Office on Tuesday.
Nearly 3,000 people died as a result of Hurricane Maria.
A director for emergency response said FEMA was only responsible for giving the water to local governments which was then responsible for distributing it to people on the island.

CEIBA, Puerto Rico – What could be millions of bottles of water meant for the victims of Hurricane Maria, who were dying for fresh water, never made it to those suffering in the aftermath of the powerful hurricane a year ago, but instead were abandoned on the tarmac at a former U.S. naval base in Ceiba, Puerto Rico, according to news reports.
Pallet after pallet of bottled water sat on the hot airstrip and was never delivered to the thousands of people so desperately in need of water that they were drinking from contaminated sites all over the island following the storm, which knocked out power to most of the island.
Ramos said he only found out about the surplus on Tuesday when photos of the thousands of bottles of water went viral.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, confirmed to ABC that the water was part of a surplus of supplies in April and was transferred to the islands’ General Services Administration.
Some of the water was initially delivered, but complaints about the taste and smell caused the government to begin testing.
It’s unclear who is at fault for the wasted water.
“The government of Puerto Rico did not receive the water to distribute during the emergency, it was under FEMA’s custody and it wasn’t until April 2018 that the surplus inventory was available upon request," Puerto Rico’s secretary of public safety, Hector Pesquera, said at a press conference in San Juan on Wednesday, according to ABC.
In the year since Maria pummeled the U.S. territory, the initial death toll of just over 60 people has been revised to almost 3,000.
Many blame the Trump administration and FEMA for what Puerto Ricans have called an inadequate response to the deadly disaster that left the island without power or clean drinking water for months.
© 2018 Cox Media Group.

(Reuters) – About 20,000 pallets of water bottles shipped to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria devastated the island last year went unused and eventually became too contaminated to drink, officials from the U.S. territory said on Wednesday.
Photos showing the water sitting on an airplane runway in Puerto Rico circulated on social media on Tuesday, the same day President Donald Trump touted his administration’s response to the hurricane as an “unsung success.” Hurricane Maria, which struck Puerto Rico in September 2017, killed an estimated 3,000 people in the U.S. territory and some officials there were critical of Trump’s claim of a successful aid effort.
Many people in Puerto Rico suffered from a lack of potable water for at least several weeks after the storm hit last September.
Officials from the federal government and Puerto Rico, in emails to Reuters, on Wednesday could not say when exactly the 20,000 pallets of water arrived on the island.
In April 2018, the Federal Emergency Management Agency reported the water was sitting unused, Ottmar Chávez, administrator of Puerto Rico’s General Services Administration, said in a statement.
Puerto Rico authorities obtained approval to take custody of it and they distributed 700 pallets of water to local residents between May and August, Chávez said.
Federal officials initially indicated the pallets were stored in a warehouse, not outside, Héctor M Pesquera, secretary of Puerto Rico’s Department of Public Security, said in a statement.
It was not clear how long the water has sat under the sun at an airport runway where it was photographed.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in a statement on Wednesday said it, “purchased the water as part of its supplies and determined there was a surplus” before making the water “available to any agency that needed it.” “Once the transfer of water took place, the water became property of the government of Puerto Rico,” FEMA said.
“The time and heat has made it bad,” he said.

The stockpile of bottled water stretches down an unused runway in Ceiba.
Case after case, pallet piled upon pallet, blue tarps and plastic glinting in the sun.
The emergency supplies were brought in by FEMA in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which smashed the island and left its residents without power, without roofs and without running water.
Federal officials commandeered the area in the far east of the island last fall as a staging ground, collecting the water and containers full of blue tarps to patch damaged and destroyed roofs in surrounding neighborhoods.
And there the supplies sat.
Storm survivors were collecting spring water from the mountains for cooking and bathing, even with the threat of disease that brought.
Ottmar Chavez, now administrator of Puerto Rico’s General Services Administration, said FEMA reported that it had about 20,000 pallets of bottled water in excess in May this year, before Chavez was appointed.
His agency claimed the water, intending to deliver it where it was needed.
“In light of this, we have been in contact with FEMA and the Department of Health to test the water inventory received by the federal agency.
We are going to return those waters,” he said.