Today I want to talk to you about how to understand the weather forecast and how it affects your outdoor movie event.
One of the most important differences between an indoor and outdoor movie event, is that those who plan an outdoor movie event must take into consideration the weather. So a couple things to keep in mind. Number one, you should have an open dialogue with your outdoor movie provider. You should also know their weather policy before the actual day of the event and know what their policy states as far as it comes to weather. (Click here to tweet this.)
You should also be talking to them on the day of the event if there is any chance of rain, and they should help consult you on what to do in the chance that there would be rain and you would have a rain out. Number two, two of the most common issues for an outdoor movie rain and high winds. Consider viewing weather.com or any other forecasting site on the internet, and consider also watching live radar feeds.
A couple things to keep in mind about any forecast or radar. First thing to keep in mind about these services is the percentages, especially the hourly percentages, are prone to faultiness. Occasionally you will see forecasts that call for one hundred percent chance of rain at 6:00 only to be met with sunny skies.
Other times you might see a forecast for zero percent chance of rain as you’re standing in a deluge of water. So the hourly forecasts are sometimes suspect. They are updated more frequently, but you should always be concerned and back up any opinions you might have by a live radar feed. Now there are problems with watching a radar.
Radars will allow you to see any major oncoming storm, but they don’t really help that often when you have pop-up showers. So don’t fully rely just on the radar. Try to take the percentages that you’re seeing in the forecast and the radar when you’re actually making your decisions. Also if you do have a small pop-up storm and you know it’s gonna be small and you know it’s gonna be passing in 10 or 15 minutes, consider pausing your event rather than canceling the event for a few minutes and then continue on once the storm passes.
Number three, two of the most dangerous things that would affect your audience and staff during an outdoor movie event are lightning and high winds. Obviously, lightning can strike without warning, putting staff and audience in danger and realize that you don’t necessarily need to hear thunder before a lightning strike could happen in your area.
So always Be on the lookout, on radar and forecast, for any potential storms that would produce lightning and make sure that you take precautions ahead of time. Another thing that you have to worry about, during an outdoor movie event, are high winds. Sometimes winds will just occur. At other times, high winds will occur right before a storm hits.
Often times, this is the warning for you to go ahead and put an emergency action into plan. So definitely keep an eye on the winds, as they are affecting your audience and your movie screen. Most movie screen companies use low-end outdoor movie screens, and high winds will blow them over or rip screens off the surface.
So you definitely want to keep an eye on the winds. Professional outdoor movie companies use high-end screens that can withstand25 mile a hour or higher winds. So keep that in mind when you’re looking at your wind speeds. I hope you’ve been enjoying our outdoor movie tips.
