Storm shuts down area before first raindrop falls

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The calm before the storm is anything but calm.

As Hurricane Isabel -- actually the prospect of Hurricane Isabel -- looms, much of the nation's capital struts to the frenzied cadence of warnings, closings, alarms and advisories for an event which may yield a storm o' the century. (The century is, after all, not yet 3 years old.)

Or it may be little more than the storm o' September.

But the frisson of disaster preparedness is already irresistible to citizen and official alike. If Isabel turns out to be only a squall, and television can return to real news, like J-Lo's broken engagement, the panic will be good practice for the first snowflake of January.

The great water ballet started in the supermarkets days ago, when Isabel was barely more than a gleam in a forecaster's eye, trolling the Atlantic off the Cape Verde Islands. The frantic and the thirsty began to fill their carts with bottled water and rolls of toilet paper. Comfort foods of every persuasion are now at a premium: what's a disaster without potato chips, tomato soup and frozen pizza?

"Entenmann's! Get me the Entenmann's," screamed one earnest homemaker as she rounded the corner of the bakery aisle at the Giant Food in Bethesda yesterday, trailing a toddler who had already broken into a designated box of emergency cookies.

Another man stood, thunderstruck in the desolation of the water aisle, where only a few chichi bottles of lime-flavored seltzer remained. Such fare would never do in the face of danger.

"That's all they have," he barked into his cell phone. A moment passed, he listened to instructions, then flung the bottles into his cart and scurried toward the battery display.

Isabel was wreaking havoc while still just a whirling red, blue and green Doppler splotch on the TV screen, leaving public officials, event planners, school administrators and other decision-makers in a quandary.