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Extreme Weather: How Storms Altered Event Plans This Year

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Photo: BizBash Staff

The floods, power outages, and transportation shutdowns brought by Hurricane Sandy on October 29 forced planners in New York, New Jersey,  Connecticut, Washington, and Boston to cancel or postpone major conferences, fund-raisers, and other gatherings in the week that followed. Venues and vendors scrambled to resume operations, and the long-term impact on the industry from lost business is still a concern.

Extreme and unpredictable weather also altered event plans and production at several other events this year:

Democratic National Convention: Hurricane Isaac threw off long-awaited plans for a major crowd when President Obama accepted his party’s nomination, forcing the planning committee to move events from the Bank of America Stadium into the Time Warner Cable Arena. In addition to cancelled plans for fireworks, more than 65,000 members of the public had tickets to watch the speech live in Charlotte, but in the end Obama addressed community credential holders via a conference call.

Republican National Convention: Wild weather care of Hurricane Isaac forced plans to shift for the Romney campaign at the R.N.C in Orlando. The weather caused planners to cancel some kickoff events and postpone the convention for a day; 128,000 feet of tenting also had to be taken down and reconstructed again after the storm.

Electric Daisy: High winds shut down and postponed some performances at the three-day music festival Electric Daisy Carnival at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in June. Insomniac, the festival’s producer, required attendees to move away from the stage and closed the gates to any newcomers in an effort to maintain safety over the show’s performance.

AT&T National Golf Tournament:
A severe storm swept across the Washington, Virginia, and Maryland regions in June causing trees to down, which forced a delay of the third round of the golf tournament at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md.