If she is snowed in at home, Marge Wold said she can go to the cupboard and find basics, like a can of soup, to get her by until she can get to a grocery store.

“With a lot of people, they don’t have that unless a pantry is open,” said Wolf, Northwest Arkansas Food Bank president and chief executive officer.

The food bank — which was closed Monday because of the bad weather — stocks the shelves of 174 food pantries. Those pantries may close as a result of the food bank being closed.

Pantries schedule to pick up loads of donations from the food bank. Food bank employees pull loads and have them ready to go when the pantry trucks arrive. Food pantries scheduled for Monday pickups will be worked in later in the week. Three refrigerator box trucks pick up donations, and missing a day can put them behind, Wolf said. Wrecking one on treacherous streets would stop those donation pickups entirely.

The problem runs both ways. The trucks can’t get out to pick up food, and the people who need the food can’t get to distribution points, Wolf said.

“Food comes in one door and out the other door. It kind of has to run like clockwork. When something like this happens, the clock just stops,” Wolf said.

Turnout was low at the community meals program Monday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Fayetteville with only about 50 people through the noon hour, said Laura Wilkins, communications coordinator. The first two visitors of the morning told her they’d spent the night in a tent.

The church, in partnership with other groups, has served meals for 12 years and doesn’t miss a day, even when the weather is bad. Some volunteers can walk in because they are downtown, Wilkins said.

“Even if we don’t have a full crew to cook, we’ll make sandwiches,” she said.

Meals on Wheels programs based in Springdale and Bentonville were unable to deliver on Monday, but both senior centers were open.

Two extra meals were delivered Friday in advance of the colder weather, said Cindy Wishon, director of Benton County Senior Activities Center. Staff called the seniors in the program Monday to check on them. Family, too, should make an effort to check on elderly relatives, Wishon said.

“It’s not just that they need the food, it’s also that they need the company,” Wishon said.

Eight people from the program and volunteers at a Bella Vista church deliver across Benton County. Safety of the volunteers is part of the decision to deliver, Wishon said.

Homebound seniors can’t clear driveways or sidewalks and that can make winter delivery a challenge, said Lori Proud, director of Springdale Senior Center. The Springdale program serves 177 seniors and lost four delivery days in December. Proud spent the morning calling clients to make sure they had heat, water, food and medication, and hopes to have meals delivered today.

“If there’s any way possible, we’re going to make sure we get them a meal,” she said.

“There are a lot of folks in this area who are hungry,” said Mary Mann, Samaritan Community Center director of community relations.

The organization’s food pantries are open Tuesday and Thursday in Springdale and Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in Rogers, Mann said. When school is out, the pantries are typically closed. During the last round of winter storms, the centers missed distribution days early in the week, but reopened on a Thursday, Mann said.

“In Rogers, we see a lot of working poor,” she said. “In Springdale, we see the truly poverty-stricken people.”

The center also serves 94 elementary schools with snackpacks sent home with children to keep them from being hungry. Extra snacks were packed just before Christmas. The next distribution will be Friday, if school is back in session, Mann said.

Those children would be getting hot meals if schools were in session, but there isn’t much she can do if the children are not in school, said Margie Bowers, food services director for the Rogers School District.

“It is a problem, and the longer we go, the harder it is on the kids,” Bowers said.

The Rogers District typically serves 11,000 to 12,000 school lunches, Bowers said. Add in the high school students, who tend to order more a la carte, and it can hit 14,000.

Students in Fayetteville schools who receive food assistance from the district pantry or the snackpack program don’t have access to the those programs when school is not in session.

Principals and social workers can anticipate changing weather conditions and send snackpacks home with students a day or two early. That happened in December when a Wednesday snow storm closed schools on Thursday and Friday, said Tracy Bratton, principal at Asbell Elementary School.

Many of the schools in Fayetteville have snackpack programs. The packs usually contain eight to 10 snack-type items to help students get through the weekend, said Sara Blickenstaff, the social worker assigned to Asbell and Leverett schools. Some 85 students receive the packs at Asbell and 40 students receive the packs at Leverett.

There is little else school staffs can do in a situation when school doesn’t reopen as scheduled, said Ananda Rosa, chief social worker in the Fayetteville district.

The district has for the past few years distributed some 400 holiday food baskets to stock up the recipient families through the long holiday break, Rosa said.

In Springdale, the district nursing office operates a pantry where families of students can go for food. Kathy Launder, the head nurse, said food boxes were distributed to between 500 and 600 children and their families.