Swinging Into Action When El Nino Decides to Crash the Party

Armed with heavy canvas tents, huge plastic covers and plenty of propane heaters, Susan Kinsey has been helping people dodge El Nino since December.

“We blame everything on El Nino,” said Kinsey, a special-events coordinator at Abbey Event Services here. “It’s the growing joke in our office. Californians are not used to planning for inclement weather.”

Around the county, people and organizations are trying to duck raindrops any way they can so big events--everything from weddings to fund-raisers to the fourth annual Valentine’s Day Sex Tour at the Santa Ana Zoo--don’t get washed out.

Sometimes they win against the weather. Often they don’t.

This weekend, with new El Nino storms hitting, it’s time again to put up the tent, move inside, or, when nothing else can be done, hope for the best.

It took months of planning to organize the 27th annual Dana Point Festival of Whales, which begins today, and organizers say the show must go on, rain or shine. That means there could be wet dogs in the Wag-a-thon walk or seasick whale watchers clinging to bobbing boats.

Kendall Baldwin-Flint, who organized the three-week event, takes the stoic approach.

“We refuse to even acknowledge there is an El Nino,” said Baldwin-Flint.

“It will not rain, it will not rain, it will not rain,” she chanted. “The whales don’t care if it is raining, they are already wet.”

Sometimes, there’s nothing to do except give up and hope for a better day.

In December, the sixth annual Garden Grove Winterfest was canceled. Organizers say the rain would have washed away their $2,000 shipment of snow from Orange County Ice.

“We had been decorating the park for more than a week; then the day before [the event] we undecorated everything so we wouldn’t ruin the decorations for next year,” said Roxanne Kaufman, the city’s recreation supervisor.

Last weekend’s storms led to an early closure of the annual I Love La Habra carnival. And flooding at the front entrance of the Santa Ana Zoo prevented staff from opening last Sunday.

With another storm approaching, zoo officials are concerned about this weekend’s popular event: the Valentine’s Day Sex Tour, during which the public can observe the wild kingdom doing the wild thing.

“If it’s just misting we will probably go ahead,” said zoo spokeswoman Leslie Perovich. “Some of the animals live in rain forest anyway so a little rain is no big deal. It depends on how bad it’s raining.”

Animals may like the water, but a limousine owed the late President Richard M. Nixon is a museum quality piece that would be damaged by rain.

So Wayne Eggleston, director of the Heritage of San Clemente Visitor’s Center, had to forego plans to display the bullet-proof limousine on Jan. 10. He had planned to honor what would have been Nixon’s 85th birthday on Jan. 9.

He struck a deal with officials at the Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda to show the stretch limousine, but plans went awry when the storm came. So visitors never saw the classic Chrysler New Yorker. Instead it was tucked away in a local garage.

“It has kept raining every weekend since,” Eggleston lamented. “Then [Nixon Library officials] wanted to take it back to re-chrome it. We let it go back and until it stops raining we can’t put it out.”

Eggleston hopes the rain will stop long enough to bring the limo back for the center’s celebration of the city’s 70th birthday on Feb. 21.

Another casualty of stormy weather is the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, where a planned Feb. 17 insider’s preview has been delayed. A notice to the news media was stamped “due to El Nino POSTPONED until March 21.”

The weather isn’t making everybody miserable.

Kinsey of Abbey Events Services said El Nino has boosted the party rental business by 35%.

Canvas and clear plastic outdoor tents can accommodate a small dinner party or 750 guests. Costs range from $69 for a 10-by-10-foot model to $6,200 for a 100-by-100-foot model. But the canopies have their limits. They are meant to withstand only 70 mph winds.

“In Orange County, Los Angeles and the Inland Empire we have 75 tents going out for Valentine’s Day and that is tremendous because typically we have about 10 going out,” Kinsey said.

One sort of event is simply unstoppable, no matter what the weather.

The Rev. J.J. Clark, a nondenominational clergyman based in Anaheim, said most brides always have a backup plan in case it rains: Move inside, reschedule the time or put the wedding under a tent.

He should know. He estimates he has married about 3,900 couples in 18 years.

“I was told by an old Southern Baptist minister once that it’s a lucky day when it rains on your wedding because the rest of your life will be nothing but sunshine,” Clark said.