You can’t imagine the process of deciding what to do in the
face of a seriously bad weather forecast. There is so much at stake in running
a tournament, that the idea of not
running the tournament is hard to envision.
It starts about two weeks before the tournament. You start
obsessing about the long-term weather forecast. The further away in time the
weather forecasts are, the more likely they are for cataclysms beyond human
ken. This is how the weather forecasters earn the big bucks, by threatening you
with a storm way off in the distance. As the day draws nearer and the storm
disappears, you are thankful to the forecasters, and everybody is happy.
One week before the tournament, the forecasts become real.
Forecasters actually can predict fairly well what will happen over the space of
a week, provided that the weather, as is usual, is coming in from the west.
Look at the weather one day away to our west, and that’s our weather tomorrow.
Easy enough, and you can skip the years of advanced weather forecasting college
for that one. But if a storm is coming up from the south, especially the southeast,
all bets are off. They’re harder to track because they have a mind of their
own. If they hit you, they’re probably nor’easters that move your house halfway
to Kansas, but as often as not they hit someone else or go out to sea
altogether.
I cancelled Bump one year, when it was in December. I called
it on the Thursday morning. There was enough snow over that weekend to warrant
having done it, and while I didn’t feel bad about the decision, I certainly
felt terribly let down after spending all the time and energy to set things up
in the first place. Big planning for nothing. Feh.
JV had the same thing a couple of years ago with Scarsdale.
He made the call in a timely manner, and it snowed to beat the band. Right
decision, same letdown.
Then there’s the tournaments that end in the middle. In a
way, this is worse. When do you send people home because it’s dangerous on the
roads? Scarsdale had a hint of this once, Ridge had it, Lexington always seems
to swim around it, although in my earliest days one year they postponed their
start. Those are local tournaments. What about a big national tournament, like
Harvard last year? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
I started watching this storm Monday. I have to admit that,
Monday night, I was pretty sanguine. It looked like the usual Columbia snow.
People are used to that. Then Tuesday and Wednesday was all dithering. The
forecasters couldn’t agree on the path of the storm, and they all admitted that
it was impossible to call. Thanks a lot. Then, this morning, we were pretty
definitely getting a lot of snow and blizzard-like conditions. Entrants were
writing and asking, some were dropping of their own accord. Still, a tournament
could probably be pulled from the people who arrived on Friday and left on
Sunday. Some people would come no matter what.
And, of course, you had already extended muchos energy on
planning, getting rooms, hiring judges, buying trophies, planning food for the
judges, lining up the staff... And this is your fundraiser, the income to
support your team. On the other hand, if enough people didn’t show up, the
tournament might implode all on its own.
What would you do?
Columbia did the right thing, and they handled it perfectly. It was their call. They cancelled, because the risk to the safety of their guests has to outweigh
every other consideration. I get the feeling that some teams might come if it
were literally the Apocalypse: they care too much about forensics above all. That
dedication is a good thing, but it needs to be tempered by the wisdom that
informs everything that isn’t forensics.
So now what the hell am I going to do this weekend?
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