[GTO JUDGE]

Declaimer: This is lengthy:::

I don't care to get caught up in a debate and won't but I thought I'd share a not so pleasant decision I had to make based on weather:

I can appreciate a difficult decision that needs made as it happened to me several years ago for our All Pontiac Show. The day before our show a good portion of the showfield was under water up past the ankles. Upon talking to the Dealer who was worried about the forecast on show day 100% heavy rains with severe T- Storms, & high winds we talked about LIABILITY, lightening hitting standing water with cars and people? With that forecast as predicted by every weather outlet, I sweated out a sleepless night. 4 am it begins raining. I am on the phone with my officers at 5 am. What do we do? It stopped raining. We are all on the phone looking at radar, heavy rain on top of us all over the Central PA region, but no rain. Do we cancel based on a forecast?

By 5.30 I am at the showfield with a sick feeling in my guts. Officers show up at 6 am. Every weather forecast said the same…. 100%. We begin calling all preregistered participants. Many thanked us, some we could not reach. They were on the road. Some came from W. Virgina, Virginia, Delaware, and upper PA near NY. 8 am no rain… folks are pulling in. I am explaining to them the situation, some drove 3 hours or longer, I was sick to my stomach and numb. Unless you have gone through this you have no idea how a decision you make will affect others.

Some were gracious, some pi$$ed, no rain. I bet we had close to 12 people show up from long distances one got a motel over night. When I tell you I was sick to my guts, that is putting it mildly. Still no rain. Some hung around. We popped the hoods on the cars and made a mini car show…. It didn’t rain a drop all friggin day. All had the forecast wrong. We looked like idiots, but how many would have come reading the same forecast?

The story gets worse: ...............We decide on a makeup day … Rain or shine: Early October was the best the dealer could do and us having a month to re-advertise, our postponed event was a rain or shine event however the weather was to be that bad... safety over ruled everything we could not in good conscience jeopardize anyone. So, that day comes: 50% chance of rain… It not only rained, it flooded a portion of the showfield, 40 degrees wind chills in the teens. Some drove through 6” of snow in upper PA to get to Lancaster. First time it snowed this early in a very very long time. It stormed all day heavy all day long. 35 cars showed that day in a monsoon. We bought pizza and coffee and drinks for all. We ended up throwing a party for all, on us. All the donations we had as our fundraiser, many expensive items went to winners for a buck or 2. We lost our a$$ to the tune of 500+ dollars. That’s a lot of money for a club to lose.

Some reading this know what happened as they were there.

My point to all this is: Unless you are the one making the decision you haven’t any idea just how tough it is to base an event on a weather forecast. Then adding insult to injury, the weather turns out to slap you in the face because your decision you made didn’t reflect the forecast. … Just my