With Governor Andrew Cuomo declaring a state of emergency for the entire state, many people in New York are bracing for Sandy. YNN's Katie Cummings spoke with shoppers at a hardware store as they stock up.

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STATEWIDE -- Stores across New York were packed with shoppers picking up last minute items on Saturday.

"We’re here to get like water, and milk, bread, stuff to get ready for the storm," said Shopper Natalie Chiodo.

"It’s definitely better to be safe than sorry and be prepared. You can always use flashlights," said Shopper Judy Pedersen.

Meanwhile other shoppers say they're already prepared for wild weather.

"Just bring out the winter things and got the car all prepared, you know winterized the cars and I had some winter things brought up from the warehouse," said shopper Tony Campbell.

Several home improvement stores reported running out of generators in a matter hours and say they had trouble keeping shelves stocked with other essentials.

"We do not sell generators but we have had a lot of calls on them and we're doing a lot of repairs on old generators that need to be fixed before the storm hits," said Ed Young's True Value Hardware Grant Szymanec.

Szymanec said his store had a twenty percent jump in sales Saturday alone...just on flashlights and batteries. Staff helped install backup sump pumps for people afraid of power outages. However he says sometimes there is buyer remorse when it comes to storm shopping.

“You get a lot of people who will buy stuff precautionary wise and then they want to return it afterward because they didn’t use it," said Szymanec.

YNN Meteorologists are monitoring Sandy and say that could very well be the case in some parts of New York.

"A lot of times the storm just doesn't live up to all the hype leading into the actual storm moving in. We still though do expect that this storm will produce some power outages and it is possible that for some people, that the power could be out for several days," said YNN Meteorologist Erick Adame.

Sandy could hit New York as early as Monday.