Sports and recreational activities have tons of benefits for participants. Outdoor activities provide athletes with fresh air, exercise, teamwork and leadership skills, and so much more. These events also provide spectators and guests with a form of entertainment in the great outdoors. While playing sports and spending time in the fresh air can be a lot of fun, it can also be dangerous if you’re not careful.

It seems like everywhere you look there are threats to your athletes and guests at schools, parks, and sports complexes. When most people think about the dangers of sports or outdoor activities, broken bones or concussions come to mind first. These types of injuries from both contact and non-contact are common and serious but they aren’t the only threats lurking.

Both newsworthy (like hurricanes) and every day weather events (such as a common thunderstorm) can have a profound impact on the overall safety of your outdoor recreation activities. If you don’t know anything about weather safety at schools, parks, or sports complexes, this is a great place to start. Get ready to learn to build your outdoor sport weather safety policy from the ground up and how to implement an effective weather technology stack to make your safety procedures automated, effective, and second nature at your facilities.

The goal? Achieving a safe environment free from weather threats for your athletes, staff, and visitors while having time to focus on other operational initiatives.

The first step to creating a weather-safe facility is understanding what weather events can cause danger in the first place.

Weather presents similar problems to single-site schools, school districts, park and recreation departments, and sports complexes. Your job as the Athletic Director, Director of Parks and Recreation, or Operations Manager, is to know what weather threats are coming and to have the tools and processes in place to manage them.

Depending on your location, there are a ton of dangerous and destructive weather events that may cause trouble for your outdoor activities.

These include:

1. Big severe weather events like hurricanes and cyclones
2. Every day severe weather events like lightning, extreme cold, high winds and heat waves

Whether it’s a high-impact, low-frequency event like a tropical cyclone, or something more common like extreme heat, there are plenty of stakeholders affected. It can be overwhelming to think about all at-risk parties, so we like to break it up into four distinct operational groups: