Wild Weather Boosts Local Business

PALM SPRINGS – This week’s stormy weather drenched the valley and washed away some people’s plans.

“It’s been bad,” says Scott Love, visitor from Canada.

Love came to the valley to play and watch golf, but instead he got rain. To stay dry, he hit the shops.

“We did a lot of shopping and spent a lot more money than anticipated,” says Love.

He’s not the only one. The rainy weather sent a flood of customers to some shops in Downtown Palm Springs.

“You can’t swim, you can’t golf, you can’t sunbath so you might as well shop,” says Bill Buxton, employee at Palm Springs General Store. “The harder it rained, those were out busiest hours.”

That wasn’t the case for every store. At Del Sol business was slow, but they sell products that rely on sun.

“We sell color change magic. Without the sun it’s hard to show customers how they work and it makes for a hard sell,” says Michael Graves, manager at Del Sol. ” It was really bad. we had to close early a few days.”

The weather was a slight set back for the store and came at a time when business is usually booming.

“This is when we make all of our money, during the winter,” says Graves. “It put a damper on things, but it’s getting better.”

Although it’s still a little chilly compared to our typical desert weather. One Saturday the skies cleared, the sun came out so did shoppers.

“We are shopping big time,” says Rich Garrison.

Scott Love says he’s glad to finally be done with shopping so he can get on to the Bob Hope Classic. It was delayed a day due to the weather, but now it’s back on.

“I’m looking forward to the next few days,” says Love.

Even though his desert vacation didn’t go as planned, Love says our wild weather is nothing compared to back home.

“It’s probably like 25 below,” says Love. “It’s definitely a lot nice here.”

Now, the calm after the storm is creating a picture perfect weekend for visitors and businesses.

“It’s excellent, excellent,” says Buxton.