VHSL Weather Rule

BTW one other pet peeve.

When I arrived at the gate at Glen Allen, I could see players on the field, so I paid and went on in.

Only to find that the game was in weather delay already.  (Not sure why players were being allowed on the field in a weather delay, but that's off point.)

The people at the gate knew the weather delay was happening.  They said nothing, had no signs posted, and took my (and many other people's) money. 

After which, in case you were wondering, there are no refunds.  So if it were the case that I couldn't return tonight, I'd just be out my $8. 

I realize everyone wants ever dollar they can lay their hands on, but come on, people, this is chicken ... stuff.

I hear ya, Midlo.

Most "Lightning" delays I've sat thru, the lightning was clearly visible and not just some "rumbling" in the distance.

I'm not quite sure what is in the VHSL rule book regarding weather delays (lightning), but the general rule the schools in our area (and Legion, LL, etc) followed was 30 minute delay from the last visible lightning strike.  Of course, if there were continuous strikes the "clock" would keep getting reset.  Frustrating when the teams are trying to get a required game in.  I don't recall any games delayed due to "rumbling".

I'm sort of surprised someone didn't have the LL weather app that can actually show how far the lightning strikes (if any) are from the phone's location.  At my daughter's last game we knew weather was moving into the area as they played their last game of a tripleheader.  A check of the app showed the nearest lightning strike was 39 miles away.  Fortunately, the weather held off - started raining 10 minutes after the final game was completed.

The situation you described was handled poorly.  If they truly were following the proper protocol (well at least what we do....), they should have had the players in the dugouts (or appropriate shelter), advised the fans to seek shelter as well and advise them at the gate of the delay.

The only problem I have with hearing distant thunder or rumbling and delaying a game, is you don't really know if it's actual thunder or what unless you are watching radar via a phone app or laptop.

How about regular season high school games that are scheduled at 6 in April and May?  Same thing happens when upper 70s and above... and then you get through at 10PM!  Kids who get out of school at 1:50PM!!

If you hear thunder, you're within 10 miles of the storm activity, and lightning can travel up to 10 miles. Small risk 10 miles away, but a risk nevertheless.

Clear out, and get your money back. I've been able to do this by forcing the issue, i.e., a mini rant v rave. No one wants to take on a ranting/raving crazed 50+ old.

When thunder is heard, or a cloud-to-ground lightning bolt is seen, the thunderstorm is close enough to strike your location with lightning.  Suspend play and take shelter immediately.

Midlo - check pages 51-53 of the VHSL Manual. Specifically PM 27-10-1(7) SAFETY/Lightning Guidelines.  Below the Lightning Safety Report is "Guidelines on Handling Contests During Lightning Disturbances".  The report has not been officially adopted but VHSL shares it with member school as information.

The VHSL Handbook is available in pdf format:http://www.vhsl.org/about.vhsl-handbook

Guidelines on Handling Contests
During Lightning Disturbances
The purpose of these guidelines is to provide a default policy to those responsible for making
decisions concerning the suspension and restarting of contests based on the presence of
lightning.  The preferred sources from which to request such a policy for your facility would
include your state high school association and the nearest of
fi
 ce of the National Weather
Service.
Proactive Planning
1. Assign staff to monitor local weather conditions before and during events.
2.  Develop an evacuation plan, including identi
fi
 cation of appropriate nearby shelters.
3.  Develop criteria for suspension and resumption of play;
      a.   When thunder is heard, or a cloud-to-ground lightning bolt is seen, the thunderstorm
          is close enough to strike your location with lightning.  Suspend play and take
   shelter immediately.
     b.   Thirty Minute Rule.  Once play has been suspended, wait at least 30 minutes after
          the last thunder is heard or
fl
 ash of lightning is witnessed prior to resuming play.
     c.   Any subsequent thunder or lightning after the beginning of the 30 minute count,
          resets the clock and another 30 minute count should begin.
4.  Hold periodic reviews for appropriate personnel.
For more detailed information, refer to the "Guidelines for Lightning Safety" contained in
the NFHS Sports Medicine
Handbook
.

Based on that, I would say the staff on site applied the rule.  I would also say, IMHO, that part 3.a. needs to be changed to prevent nonsense of the type that went on yesterday.

And oh yeah, as I write this, it's dark outside and pouring.  The site is about 5-6 miles from me and I suppose the storm might give that area a miss, but it's not looking good for tonight.  We truly missed the window of opportunity yesterday.

I guess I am just a "pandering nervous nelly." I can tell you that this school year I never once saw a single lightning bolt while I was on the field of play. Why? Because at our school we don't "detect lightning." We PREDICT it. So by the time lightning is actually in our area, we are already off the field. Also, there is ZERO discussion when it comes to lightning here.... Get off and stay off until I tell you different.

I'm sure this kid's family wishes they would have gotten off the track for "just thunder."

http://www.kfvs12.com/story/63...clienttype=printable

The issue is one of probabilities.  Lightning can of course strike anywhere.  It can also come wholly without warning, without prior thunder.  If we adopt the "if it saves one life" approach, no games will ever be played.  Just as we wouldn't play if we obsessed over posted links to articles about guys who die from pitches to the head, guys who have sudden heart stoppages from bad hops that thump their chests, third basemen killed by flying bats or bat pieces, pitchers nailed by line drives, etc.  All of those things have happened in baseball, and I dare say, with greater frequency than lightning strikes.

If we all lived our lives this way, we'd never venture outside.  We sure would never get into a car.  But then, they say most deadly accidents actually happen in the home, so ... where do I go to be 100.00000000 safe? 

There is no such thing.  You have to accept this as a fact of life on earth for human beings.

As a side note, the fans from last Thursday were forced outside the pay gate, where in the main, they milled about in the open parking lot, which BTW is on higher ground.  The marginal increase in safety from this move was somewhere between non-existent and negative.  (The players did go indoors, while the coaches milled about outside the school door, shaking their heads.)

Let's be truthful.  Someone is fearful not of an injury, but of LIABILITY, and all this is more in the nature of CYA than safety.

And whenever that subject comes up, someone claims to know all about how such cases happen.  Well, I've been a trial lawyer in this state for 30 years, and to my knowledge it's never happened once. 

This sort of CYA thinking is rife in government contexts.  Again, for non-governmental contexts, see the Squirrels' handling as how people address infinitesimal risks in their daily lives. 

As a coda on this, I noted that Manchester played Clover Hill Saturday.

Why on earth didn't Atlee and Hanover play on Saturday, too? 

The conference just cancelled the game entirely and let Atlee take the top seed (home game) going into regionals based on having the higher seed going into the conference tourney (regular season champs).

Midlo - no doubt it's definitely a CYA so the school isn't held liable.

What I have never quite understood was sending the players to the dugouts while "advising" fans to vacate the stands and head to their vehicles or appropriate shelter.   Shouldn't the players/coaches/umps head to the school or appropriate shelter as well?  It would be better shelter than the dugouts.   At our local HS sending fans to their cars is sort of puzzling as the parking lot is on higher ground than the baseball and softball diamonds.  It's also a good 1/2 mile walk which takes you by the football stadium with its tall lights.

I do recall one night the team was in a lightning delay.  As usual, players to the dugouts and fans advised to go to their cars.  (Wouldn't be able to go in the school since it was locked).  We watched for an hour or so from the parking lot while the coaches/players/umps milled around.  Finally after an hour, the game was called as the lightning was still visible and the visiting team had an hour+ ride back to their school.

I guess if the dugouts are grounded, maybe that's acceptable?

In this case, they did send the players up the hill to the school's gymnasium.

Players shouldn't be allowed to remain in their dugouts. Fans and players should head into an enclosed structure (such as a school building, an enclosed barn, etc) or into vehicles such as the school bus.

And I worry way less about liability than I do about injury. I let the lawyers handle all the legal stuff! But maybe you need to stick to being a lawyer and leave science to science. Lightning requires electrostatic conditions in order to strike. Like I said, at our school we do not detect lightning. We PREDICT it. Does it mean there is always lightning when our system sounds the alarm? No. But it also means that lightning WILL NOT strike unless our alarm has gone off.

You can piss and moan all you want. You can run the courtroom, but I am part of the game administration staff and we run the fields. 

As I said, these things don't go to the courtroom.  So you won't find me there with respect to a case arising out of this.

And I fully understand lightning and risk of lightning.

I don't understand when a front has already passed, is moving away, and there are faint and distant rumbles of thunder off in the distance, getting further and further away.

I took note of a situation in one of the NCAA games recently -- was it one of VCU's Monday games?  They announced that lightning was drawing closer and warned that a suspension/evacuation may have to occur.  But it was still 12 miles out so they held off, and in the end, they never had to stop anything.

To me, this is what is called for -- a balanced, reasoned approach that appreciates real risk, while keeping an eye on risks that are so remote that they don't merit disruption.

Midlo is a trial attorney...things will be much clearer now when reading his posts .

Before you get too offended Midlo I am a LEO so it is only natural I take a jab.

In the meantime, Glen Allen can't seem to get things right.  Their regional game was moved to yesterday at 3:30 at their place.  Trying to outsmart the weather, they agreed to play at the other team's place in Newport News, only to have a storm hit that area while Glen Allen saw nothing but clouds until drizzle at 6:00 and rain at 6:45, i.e., a 3:30 start would've allowed the game to finish.  I understand they have set the game at U of R at 1:00 today but looking out my window, that is in jeopardy as well.

But hey, there were clouds at Glen Allen yesterday, who knows if they would've been allowed to play there anyway.

P.S.  Yes I said trial attorney, but more in the business vein, so ... no offense taken.  If I were advising a client in this area, my thoughts would be (a) get insurance and rest easy, and (b) if you have no more risk tolerance than this, maybe running a business is not your cup of tea.

Bulldog - I'm curious.  How do you PREDICT lightning?  I have never heard of anyone predicting lightning.

Yes, thunderstorms can be predicted, but even then it can be hit or miss.

With regards to the dugouts at our HS, I don't think they are "grounded".  I don't know for sure though.    In fact, I'm pretty sure at least one of the light poles (metal) are fairly close to the dugouts.  Close enough that I would not want to be in or near the dugout of lightning ever struck one of those poles.

our Thorguard system does not detect a lightning strike. Instead, it senses when there is enough electrostatic pressure in the air within a certain radius (10 miles normally) that is likely to produce lightning. When that occurs, the alarm sounds. It also estimates the time that you can expect to be able to get back to outdoor activities.

as for dugouts, absolutely not! 

Trust me, I was as angered and confused as anyone when my son texted me that the game yesterday was moved to War Memorial.  I first checked the weather for that area, and I saw that they had a 100% chance of rain.  I gave the AD the benefit of the doubt and drove there.  It was a deluge with lightening and thunder, and then I was told that they would wait all night if need be.  I noticed that there was a 90% chance for thunderstorms up to and after midnight.  I know Denbigh drove to our place the day before, and we were rained out then, but to move to a place with absolutely no chance of playing was as dumb a move as I have seen.  I went to the Deep Run/Clover Hill game until it started raining at 7:00.  Three and a half hours would have been plenty to get our game in.  It seems like those in charge don't want Glen Allen to play.

I tend to agree with Midlo's point.

Fewer than 30 people per year are killed by lightning strikes in the U.S. each year, and only a small fraction of the fatalities are sports-related.

So to mitigate a  <1:10,000,000 risk, which is probably closer to 1:100,000,000 for baseball games outside of Florida, we have instituted a whole system of lightning protocols and officials anxiously monitoring their lightning machines whenever the skies darken.

It strikes me as a poor allocation of resources that cannot be the result of rational risk management or cost-benefit analysis.

However, when I umpire scholastic games, I keep that opinion to myself and cheerfully comply with whatever the school's game management officials say.

Any attorneys on the list work on GM's risk management program?

Kinda like banging the Championship Final of the Conference 20 tournament, so they would retain the No. 1 seed even though there were other options, and a perfectly sunny and playable date on Saturday!

GoHeels, I heard it was an AD from some other school who made the call to not play on Saturday.  Obviously Hanover was not pleased with that.  

Could be.

What I know was that there were plenty of options, and as far as I'm aware, every other Conference Championship in the greater Richmond area was played on Thurs, Fri, or if needed, on Saturday.  Conference 20 being the lone exception.

I'm also aware that the Hanover folks were less than pleased, as they should have been.  The entire situation was as poorly handled an issue as I've seen.  The VHSL not stepping in is another example of poor leadership.

Unconfirmed report was that the decision not to play that Conf. 20 championship game on Friday was made by the conference tourney director, who I was told was Dinwiddie's AD, so at least he was neutral.

I suspect the deciding factor may have been that their region was scheduled to start its tourney on Monday.  Whereas those who did play Saturday did not have regional games scheduled until Tuesday.

Meaning, I think he may have been influenced by a desire to keep the conference's teams from expending their pitching going into regionals.  That's a bit of speculation on my part, and if I'm guessing right, you could debate whether it was the right decision, but it occurs to me that this was likely the thinking.

At this point, I just hope we can get through the regional games before the state tourney dates arrive.

With the weather forecast looking like it won't cooperate, does anyone know what will happen if we can't get the games in?  

Midlo,

You may be correct as well!  However, the chain of events is as follows:

Thursday has been well documented in regards to the marathon delay, without a drop of rain, or lightning for a few hours. 

Friday did receive legitimate weather, but said weather had passed by 6:30, and there was no tarp on the field, and seemingly no interest in attempting to get it playable.  Further, I have learned that there were options such as moving the game to Hanover, or a neutral site (another local HS had apparently offered) that were rejected.

Finally, according the VHSL, if there is a playable date, games are supposed to be played.  This played out during a couple regular season games that would have dictated conference tournament seeding.  This was the explanation given as to why the games had to be played.  Only if weather prevented the games from being played up to and during the final playable date, would the standings up to that point be used for seeding.  As such, if true, the game should have taken place on Saturday.  Otherwise, the VHSL is just making stuff up as they go.

So, when one follows the chain of events...its gets a little hairy.

"Otherwise, the VHSL is just making stuff up as they go."

Noooooo!  That would never happen!  Would it? 

(Though knowing your interest in Hanover baseball, you probably already know the 2013 state championship pitching rule snafu story.)

Maybe not.

It's far more likely is that our lightning management programs are the result of our natural tendency to exaggerate the risks posed by low probability but dramatically catastrophic events.

I can't find any evidence that lightning has ever been a significant killer of baseball players, especially high school baseball players, whose season is over before the summer months when 70% of the nation's miniscule number of lightning fatalities occur.

The century-long decline in lightning deaths is this country is generally associated with three main factors: urbanization (fewer people out and about unprotected), modernization (the farmer in an enclosed cab is both more protected and better able to seek more substantial cover than the one behind a mule), and better medical treatment (first responders and trauma centers have decreased the ratio of lightning deaths to lightning injuries).

There's a web site that tracks all deaths associated with baseball. Since 2008, they report one lightning death at a U.S. baseball game--a boy playing catch on a field after his game was cancelled because of bad weather.

When the NWS published a study on lightning deaths a couple years ago, they had to aggregate seven years to get enough events to bother counting.  Of the top 12 activities people were involved in when killed by lightning, only one was a team sport (soccer, less than 2 deaths per year) and only one was an individual sport (golf, 1.1 deaths per year).

I googled around a bit and couldn't find an instance of anyone killed by lightning at a U.S. high school baseball game before or after our lightning protocols were put in place. There was one in Japan last year.

The people who sell one brand of lightning predictor have an example on their site of their equipment sounding an alarm about a half hour before lightning hit a batting cage in Florida. But their case study doesn't mention the local conditions in the interval between the alarm and the strike, so we don't know if people would have taken shelter by exercising normal caution even if the alarm hadn't sounded. That's all the info i could find about deaths prevented by these systems every school has to buy.

The more I look into it, it looks like an industry has sprung up to solve a non-problem, and they'll probably be in business a long time because failure of their systems is statistically impossible.

Swampboy,

As it happens, I believe that one death in 2008 actually happened here in VA, as I seem to remember a Little League tragedy up around Fredericksburg somewhere in that time frame.  Perhaps the fact that this isolated incident happened right here fueled some of the response represented by the VHSL rule.  The local publicity could have fueled concern.  Had it happened several states away, maybe a different approach.

Yes it was. Spotsylvania County, 2009.

More dangerous than lightening - riding the bus to the game.

Risk of injury or death in motor vehicles is the #1 risk that nearly everyone takes everyday. 

Thing is you can walk away from most of them.  Getting hit by lightening or plane crashing...usually fatal or nearly so.  Anymore we are a zero tolerance society.  In 1971 there were 55 commercial airline crashes, if a similar number happened today people would lose their minds.

As it happens, there was a teenager struck by lightning in the Richmond area a few days ago.  Totally unrelated to school operations or sports; he was just walking from one place to the next during a storm.

He not only lived, he was up and walking around and reportedly tried to refuse medical attention.  Some adults on site insisted he at least go with an ambulance to get checked out.  No further report, so I hope he's OK.  Actually I would bet he is, otherwise it'd be all over the news.

Which makes the point:  an isolated tragedy tends to send us rushing to make new rules, in the vain belief that we can prevent any and all tragedies.  The rules that come out of that mindset don't always make a ton of real world sense.  Yet we end up having to live and grind our teeth under them. 

I knew a kid at Virginia Tech when I was a freshman who got hit by lightning the summer after HS and before college. He had complete amnesia afterwards. He tried valiantly to rally and re-learn as much as he could that summer and fall but had to drop out of school because it was just too much, too soon.

I wonder if VHSL could convene an emergency meeting and pass a rule to ban rain?

Based upon how VHSL has handled their business the past week.....they would find a way to make it snow!!!

I remember that incident and it still has repurcussions to this day. 

In that particular case the storm had passed and had been gone for quite some time.    The LL game had been called and not everyone had left yet.  Two of the boys were playing catch.  I don't remember if they were on the field or not.