It has been springtime all winter long until I decide to run my second tournament ever. I’m running the tournament this weekend in the Wichita-ish, KS area; El Dorado to be specific. None of the 11 current registrants are in El Dorado as far as I can tell, so everyone would have to travel via the interstate/highway system. There is a massive storm coming Friday night at 6:00PM and going on until 6:00PM on Saturday. My tournament was scheduled for 8:30AM-6:30PM this Saturday, the 24th.
I’ve read the rules and it seems that “extremely inclement weather” is a valid reason to cancel if it renders the site unusable. I’m not from Kansas originally, I’m not exactly sure how well prepared the state is to deal with large snowstorms. “extremely inclement weather” around here is usually flooding or tornadoes.
We’re getting forecasted solid 4-8 inches of snow, some sources saying 12 inches of snow over 24 hours, so the roads and all might be OK in the morning, but by the evening, there might be issues with getting in and out of the venue by car. There isn’t really a way to know how bad things will be in town until it happens. Forecasts can be off. The city/state might not have enough plows or drivers to keep up with the snowfall. I don’t know.
I’m getting some cancellations from players, and a large portion of my players are new and might not know they can withdraw for a refund, and they could just be planning to skip the event.
Should I cancel this event now and issue refunds? Or should I wait until the snowstorm actually hits and re-assess? Or should I try to run the event until it seems unsafe to continue?
In the past I know what we’ve done is allow posts about cancelled or delayed events in the forums, but not all members use the forums or even know about them. (And you do have to be registered to get access to your member dashboard to reach the forums.)
We’ve asked for a way to post banners on MUIR so we could post a system-wide banner for things like bad weather.
I don’t know if we’ve got an inclement weather policy posted, I’ve asked Korey.
In your case, do you have emails for your advance entries to contact them?
Good. We are working on posting a formal policy notice for things like inclement weather situations, citing the rulebook and other past policy pronouncements.
In the end it comes down to TD/organizer discretion, if you feel conditions are unsafe at the site or for players traveling to the site, you can cancel, but you should try to contact players as best you can, email, phone, website, social media, etc. If this was an event advertised through US Chess, you should probably drop them an email letting them know the event was cancelled in case anyone contacts the office about it.
Years ago there was a player from Lincoln who drove down to an advertised event in Oklahoma. When he got there, nobody knew a thing about a chess tournament, so he contacted the office. It turned out the affiliate/TD were advertising Grand Prix events in out-of-the-way places, not holding them, but sending in the reports so several people could get Grand Prix points from them.
I once played in a Saturday tournament at Wayne State College in Wayne NE, and it started to snow on the way up there. By mid-afternoon, the roads out of town were all closed, so we wound up spending the night in some unoccupied dorm rooms and I ran a late-night tournament for the snowed-in players.
Thanks! This saved my bacon yesterday. The initial snowfall wasn’t as bad as forecasted but it was still pretty bad. Despite that, I had 9 people come to my event yesterday and had a great tournament.