Sometime Tuesday Afternoon

When Hurricane Linda, billed as the Storm of the Apocalypse, hovered off the coast of Baja, we were told to pray and prepare.

“Powerful Hurricane Churns Off Mexico Coast,” our headline said. “. . . Be Ready . . .” another warned.

Disaster teams geared up, the Red Cross checked its blood supply, bulldozers built sand berms along the coast and television’s weather forecasters drooled in anticipation.

All of us Good Citizens, heeding the early warnings, hurried out to buy candles, bottled water, butane tanks, canned beans, six-packs of beer, bags of rice and enough medical emergency supplies to stock a trauma ward.

We loaded up on sandbags from our local fire stations and, like true believers seeking psychic contact with alien forces, we watched the skies.

Then, another headline: “Hurricane Weakens, but Threat Still Strong.”

Well, all right, we’d watch the skies with less frequency, maybe once in the morning and once in the afternoon, but still be alert to any sudden warning signs, like palm trees snapping or windows exploding inward.

Then: “Hurricane Losing Strength Off Baja Coast.”

But, we said to ourselves, don’t be fooled. A weakened hurricane, which originally packed winds up to 175 mph, is still a hell of a lot worse than a summer breeze through the sycamore branches.

Finally: “Hurricane Linda May Bring Clouds.”

And Southern California’s Storm of the Century trickled out to sea with a final media warning: “Precipitation Possible Tuesday Afternoon.”

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And now we have El Nino to look forward to.

For those with a limited knowledge of linguistics, the second word is pronounced nin-yo and not, as Mayor Riordan might say, nee-no. This will be clarified someday when newspapers are able to afford tildes, the crooked little line often used over the letter “n” to give it a “nyah” sound.

The phrase el nino, to continue in the spirit of learning, means the child, so named because the brunt of the storm is usually felt around Christmastime when we celebrate, so the legend goes, the birth of the Christ Child, or (Say after me:) El Nin-yo. Now you’ve got it.

If I sound more, well, erudite today it’s because, you may have noticed, I’m in a new location and feel I ought to respond to the move with something other than a dog story on the first day.

Back to El Nino. It’s a name given to the interplay between warm currents in the Pacific Ocean off South America and changes in atmospheric temperatures, wave patterns and rain levels along the West Coast.

In other words, El Nino packs enough rain to clog our storm system, incapacitate our sewage system, strangle our freeways, shut down Disneyland and bury Malibu under 16 tons of mud.

I will spare you the disaster-warning headlines that have accompanied the first hint of El Nino’s presence this year, except to say we have published 65 El Nino stories since January and it’s not over yet.

Massive precautions are being taken against the impending disaster, including, thank God, a visit to L.A. by Barbara Boxer. Let the winds howl and the thunder roar, our senator is coming to form an ad hoc committee, and all will be well.

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I realize that El Nino is not a kid to be taken lightly, having caused considerable chaos in the past, but it isn’t something to live in fear of. To quote meteorologist John Sherwin, “Buy extra insurance, but don’t sell the beach house.”

Sherwin is the West Coast forecaster for WeatherData Inc., a Kansas-based national weather forecasting company. He’s not all that sure El Nino is even coming. While the conditions are there, he says with a telephonic shrug, “It’s up to Mother Nature.”

He hinted that the media might be over-hyping the whole thing and suggested that if he lived in, say, Malibu--a place he considers the Wichita version of Paradise--he wouldn’t do anything special to prepare for El Nino. “I’d just try not to think about it,” he said casually. “It’s not a done deal.”

Sherwin went on to debunk the measured hysteria that accompanied threats of Hurricane Linda pounding ashore with monstrous effect.

“Its winds were 175 mph because it was over water with a temperature of 85 degrees,” he said. “By the time it reached L.A. the winds probably wouldn’t have been as strong as a Santa Ana.”

I know people for whom all of this matters not at all. They are convinced that even though Linda turned out to be little more than a cloudy afternoon in most places, The Kid is going to wash us out to sea.

Me? I’m like the lazy possum in the children’s story that watched the squirrels prepare for winter by storing up acorns and didn’t do a thing to get ready himself.

If Sherwin is wrong and El Nino wipes me out, perhaps you will spare me a few acorns, for which I will trade a snifter or two of fine cognac. I am not entirely unprepared, you see. It’s just the acorns I lack.

Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com