If you've been paying attention to the stock market and Fed rate cuts this week, you may have noticed that a deadly ice storm has crossed the plains from Kansas to Oklahoma to Missouri. Over a million people have been left without power due to ice felling power lines, and schools across all three states have been closed almost this entire week. In Oklahoma alone, all 77 counties in that state have been declared in a "state of emergency." Not good.

What to do when half of the town is without power and it's right at the freezing mark? Find relatives or friends to visit (and stay the night with), find a nearby hotel and check in (if it has power), or spend all day in retail stores to occupy the kids and keep them from climbing the walls in your powerless home. So, let's bring in the world's largest retailer -- Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT). I visit one of the retailer's locations every week to perform research. Could not do this part of Monday and Tuesday of this week, though -- a loss of power caused a local Wal-Mart Supercenter to be completely shut down. See the picture to the right? Ever see a Wal-Mart parking lot that empty?