“Definitely extreme weather is here to stay,” said Shachi Mehra executive chef and partner at Adya, Indian restaurant in Anaheim, California. The restaurant is located in the Anaheim Packing House, a food hall in a historic 1919 citrus-packing house near Disneyland.
Media focus on extreme weather can hurt business, too. Dan Dawson, owner of Horizon Divers in Key Largo, Florida, saw business boom during the pandemic. Now it's back to pre-pandemic levels. But when storms like Idalia close in, tourists flee — even though Dawson's spot in Key Largo was 300 miles from where Idalia hit.
Still, in some places that offer a respite from the heat and storms, businesses are getting an unexpected bump. “When you see temperatures rising to the amount they were in Phoenix you immediately saw, not just with our hotel but all the hotels in the area, our occupancies all went up,” said Fred Reese, the hotel’s general manager.