Seven Steps for a Stronger Weather Plan

By Eric Hjellming

Picture an all too familiar scene: 72 hours before an event, refreshing the forecast on your browser, seeking the one weather service that makes you feel better, hoping that high chance of rain goes away. You’ve prepared load in plans, staffing schedules, confirmed your vendors, but have you taken the time to develop a comprehensive weather plan? Luckily, you don’t need to be a meteorologist to put your management skills to use in determining your weather response plans well in advance of your event. Utilizing weather & heat action matrices to predetermine your reaction to a set criteria of weather concerns will take the guesswork out of the equation when you’re anticipating adverse weather – and reduce your stress load leading in to your events.

There are many, many potential risks and factors that go in to a full risk management plan, but here we’re going to focus specifically on weather threats and proactive approaches to mitigating the risk to your on-site stakeholders. The weather concerns we are focusing on now are lightning, wind and rain.

LIGHTNING

When we discuss weather risks at live events, thunderstorms come to mind most often. Visually and audibly imposing, your patrons naturally respond to storms as they occur at any live event or even when they see a storm on the horizon. However, if you begin your weather response as the thunderstorm makes contact, you are likely responding too late to the impending risk.

For a moment, let’s rename a thunderstorm to a lightning storm, the latter of which keeps the key risk front of mind. Thunder peals may be indicative of lightning, but it’s the thunder bolt that poses a threat to your event. I offer the rebranded term to start modifying our mental perspective on storms. When we think of a thunderstorm, we think strong rain, wind, thunder and lightning combined. But thunderstorms do not always produce rain. Lightning can strike 10 miles in front of rain, appearing out of clear air. As you monitor the weather, always remember that lightning is not reliant on a visible storm, do not just rely on visual cues to guide your weather response.

I’ve heard many event managers who believe a weather threat appeared out of nowhere because they never received notification of a severe thunderstorm inbound. As an event manager, you need to be aware of the very specific criteria that must exist for a storm to be labeled severe. A severe thunderstorm is a thunderstorm that contains large hail, one inch in diameter or larger, and/ or damaging winds of 58 mph or greater. We can all agree that a thunderstorm with 50mph winds and no hail can still wreak havoc on your event, but that storm would never be classified as “severe” in any weather forecast. The key take-away: If you’re waiting for a phone notification that a severe storm is inbound, you are missing a large range of storms that can cause damage and loss of property/life to your event ground.

WIND

When you consider weather impacts on live events, wind doesn’t come to immediate mind. But with tents, video walls, speakers, and more to consider, this element should rank higher on all of our radars.

What are the first pieces of equipment that come to mind which cause damage and injury as the wind picks up? Unsecured pop up tents! Take a 10’x10’ vendor tent and raise it to the maximum height. It won’t take strong wind to start tugging at that canopy. Unfortunately, it’s our vendor areas that typically carry the bad rap for unweighted tents so you should make sure you’re requiring vendors to weight their tents in contracts and verify onsite that vendors are in compliance.

But what may not come to mind at first is all of the stage equipment you have onsite – videoboards, speakers, rigging, scaffolding, platforms, etc. Each of these pieces of equipment were designed with specific wind tolerances. When renting equipment, you need to understand the wind tolerances from a structural engineer. Ask your rental vendors for the structural ratings on these items to determine the safe limits for the equipment you’re bringing onsite. Once you know the wind loads for your equipment, you can determine the wind speed that triggers your preventative measures and the higher speed that should cause immediate action to avoid damage or loss.

RAIN

Rain is another weather concern you usually don’t associate with imminent risk, but swamped event grounds or parking lots still pose varying degrees of danger to your participants and spectators, as well as potential damage to your event site. You want to have a preventative reaction to heavy rainfall before your portables and golf carts start floating away – a situation that has happened on one of my event sites. Additionally, inbound rain can always come with a risk of forming cloud-to-cloud or cloud-toground lightning.

CREATING YOUR WEATHER ACTION MATRIX

At Drum Corps International, we produce 115 outdoor summer music competitions across the United States in just an eight week period between late June and mid- August. With approximately 110 of those occurring outdoors, we invariably will end up dealing with any of the above weather conditions at multiple events throughout our annual season. Several years ago we adopted the Weather Action Matrix from the Event Safety Alliance to organize our pre-event weather planning and guide our on-site response when we experience a weather concern. Here I’ll walk you through the process we utilize to craft our weather response for each of our events.

STEP ONE: Identify the Different Areas of Your Event

When you’re planning out your weather action matrix, it’s important to identify and approach each area of your event site with a different plan. The performers on the main stage, the audience at the main stage, your vendor area, kid’s area, midway, etc. This becomes especially important the larger your event site is. After all, if the distance from your main stage to the parking lot is two miles, then you’ll need to have different emergency responses to each location with sheer physical distance. By breaking the site out in to groups defined by different physical areas, you will start to tailor-make a cohesive weather response. Once you’ve determined the number of different areas you need to include in a weather response, you’ll have the total number of weather matrices you are creating for your event.

Now create your Weather Action Matrix page for each area you’ve identified. Across the header place “Weather Action Plan for VENUE”, filling in each area/venue name.

STEP TWO: Identify the Stakeholder Groups in Each Area

Focusing at one identified response area at a time, determine all the different stakeholders groups you have in each area. For example, at the main stage you have your patrons, vendors, control board, stagehands, the performing act on stage, your headliner preparing to go on, etc. Additionally, you should consider any structures/equipment onsite that can be affected by weather. Video boards, speaker stacks, scaffolding, tents, you will want to figure out a sensible way to lay this equipment out in your weather plan. Through this process you will consider how to handle each of these stakeholder groups. While some may have the same response, you may handle other groups differently.

STEP THREE: Creating the X-Axis

Grab your Weather Action Matrix sheets. Now you have the column headers at the top of your X-Axis. Fill in each of the stakeholder/structure groupings that you’ve identified for a weather response.

STEP FOUR: Set Your Response Trigger Rings

Before we dive in to the types of risks, let’s codify the risk level by color levels:

• Green: Low Risk, All Clear

• Yellow: Impending Risk

• Red: Immanent Risk

• Black: Catastrophic Risk

In order to guide our response, we need to set up response rings – rings around your event site at set distances that will guide your response up and down the color levels onsite.

First, start with a standard ring distance:

• Green: Over 20 miles from your event site

• Yellow: 20-8 miles from your event site

• Red: Less than 8 miles from your event site

Typically, we will not set a response ring for the black zone as that response at many of our events is less about distance of weather and more about severity of the weather inside any of the other response rings.

Now that you have the standard zone distances, you will start to tweak those distances to your exact event. No two sites will be exactly alike, so your response time may need to be modified. Let’s return to the main stage example. In the case of severe weather, will our patrons need to return to their cars or do we have suitable shelter in place for all of our attendees? More than likely we will need them to return to their vehicles, but that means we need to give them lead time to travel. What is the average age of our attendees? Are we dealing with mobility concerns with an elderly audience? Are we serving alcohol and expecting inebriated attendees? What direction do they need to travel to get to the parking area – the most typical weather pattern around the country approaches from the West. We’ll need to do some math to determine the lead time we need to evacuate the event site and how long will it take to evacuate the mainstage? The average walking speed is 3.1 miles per hour (and varies dramatically across a population). At that speed, it will take an able bodied attendee with an unobstructed path 20 minutes to reach their vehicle one mile away.

Consider the speed of your inbound weather - the average lightning storm moves at a ground speed of 20mph. At that speed, this storm will travel from your red trigger ring to the center of your event site in 24 minutes and take one hour to travel from your yellow trigger ring to the center of your event site. Note that as you monitor the weather on event day, you will need to monitor the speed your storm is travelling, to inform if you need to modify your response ring distances onsite.

With the above example, I only have four minutes to spare between calling an evacuation and having my attendees reach their vehicles. However, I know that the evacuation will involve a large number of patrons, slowing down the average walking speed. What if my parking lot is 2 miles away and reliant on shuttle busses to get my patrons safely to their vehicles? These factors will dramatically alter the amount of time needed to get my patrons to safety, and would therefore alter when I need to initiate an evacuation.

Having considered all of the above factors, I may choose to modify the distances to my trigger rings. If I need 45 minutes to get my attendees to safety, I may set my red trigger to 15 miles rather than 8, pushing my yellow trigger further out. You’ll want to follow this same process to tailor your trigger rings to the right distance to your event space.

STEP FIVE: Create Your Y-Axis

We’ve identified the three weather conditions we’re monitoring and we’ve set the trigger ring distances for our event site, now we’re ready to set up the Y-Axis of our Weather Action Matrix!

Down the Y-Axis you’ll group your weather risks by color code:

• Green for your All Clear

• Yellow for when a lightning storm enters the mile marker on your yellow trigger, rain enters the mile marker on your yellow trigger, or when wind exceeds a warning speed for the equipment on your site

• Red for when a lightning storm enters the mile marker on your red trigger, rain enters the mile marker on your red trigger, or when wind exceeds a dangerous speed for the equipment on your site

• Black for tornadic activity

STEP SIX: Fill in Your Response Plan

Now we’re ready to fill in our Weather Action Matrix. You’ve indicated your weather triggers by color, speed and distance along the Y-Axis and your major stakeholders for each area of your venue along the top of the X-Axis. The final step to complete your weather action matrix is to go up each column and set a specific response for each stakeholder group you’ve identified. These responses can be as complex or simple as makes sense for your event, but make sure they’re specific enough that your event staff and/or volunteers can follow the directions you’ve assigned them to.

STEP SEVEN: Brief Your Staff

It is event day, you’ve put in all of the work to map out a proactive weather response plan – now make sure your staff is briefed on the plan! At Drum Corps International we host pre-event safety briefings with all event staff. If we’re already aware of a chance of weather, we will hold a focused discussion about the specifics of the Weather Action Matrix and respond to questions.

One final piece of advice. I would strongly suggest hiring the services of a weather forecasting service to assist you in the monitoring of the weather patterns on your event day. There are a number of services out there that specialize in live events over a wide spread of price points. I’m willing to bet you have several weather apps downloaded to your phones already, but these apps are providing you incomplete data, often delayed as much as 15 minutes. On a day with inbound weather, you will want the most up to date information and will appreciate the professional knowledge of your forecasting service!

Best of luck crafting your Weather Action Matrix and wishing you all successful and safe events this summer!

Eric Hjellming is the Event Operations Manager for Drum Corps International, the leader in producing events for the world’s most elite and exclusive marching ensembles for student musicians and performers. Since 2013, Eric has produced and consulted with marching arts events across three continents, combining professional experience and education in nonprofit arts management to create and foster opportunities for worldwide music making

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