Bay Area shoppers buy soup, get warm ahead of storm

LAFAYETTE, Calif. (KGO) -- People across the Bay Area are bracing for Thursday's big storm.

RELATED: Preparations underway for biggest storm in Bay Area in months

Bobby Pohl at Diablo Foods says shopping patterns change before storms. "Customers are coming in, buying a lot of soup and staying warm," he said.

They're preparing to stay inside, warm and toasty.

"Wine and beer sales definitely go up," Pohl added.

The soggy commute on Wednesday is a reminder to tighten things up at home. Tarps are in the front of people's minds at the Ace Hardware store in Lafayette where stock managers follow the forecast.

"We follow the weather pattern especially this time of year as long as we can so we're stocked with the materials that we think the customers will be needing," said Ace Hardware employee David Guerra. "In case of a big rain."

East Bay Municipal Utility District crews prepare for the next round of rain by testing sewer overflow sensors Wednesday after one alerted to a possible spill last Saturday.

"The electronic sensors that we have are new," said East Bay MUD employee Jenesse Miller. "We upgraded them in August. So this is the first time we've had the disconnect in the instruments and we just want to make sure there was no overflow so again there's no physical evidence that there was an overflow."

Many would like to see the reservoirs overflowing after years of drought.

"Our reservoirs are above average and they're doing so much better than last year," Miller said. "I think full system capacity we're around 80 percent."

Meanwhile, Bay Area cities have brought in sandbag stations as we brace for the next round of rain.

Click here to track the storm with Live Doppler 7.