The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- April 26, 1999

Spring Championships Preview -- Enlightening policy

Severe weather guidelines enable administrators to make decisions in a flash

BY GARY T. BROWN
STAFF WRITER

Here's a pop quiz: Say you're a baseball or softball coach conducting your team's practice one afternoon when a thunderstorm brews up in the distance. You see lightning but the accompanying thunder is not heard until several seconds later. Do you hustle everyone off the field or hit a few more fungoes?

According to recommendations from the NCAA Sports Medicine Handbook, the correct answer is: better safe than sorry.

Lightning is the most consistent and significant weather hazard that may affect intercollegiate athletics, and until last year, there were not any NCAA guidelines to follow in situations where lightning was a threat.

Now, Guideline 1D in the Sports Medicine Handbook explains precautionary measures to take in order to avoid a tragedy.

'Chain of command'

"The guideline was developed to provide schools some assistance with decisions involving weather and the completion of activities," said Randall W. Dick, NCAA senior assistant director of sports sciences. "The most important thing to note about the guideline is the emphasis on a decision-making process to be established before the activity so that all parties are clear about the pro-cess in case a situation arises."

The guideline stresses that a "chain of command" be established as to who monitors threatening weather and who makes the decision to remove a team or individuals from the site. Dick said an emergency plan should include instructions for participants as well as spectators.

Also critical to the guideline is a "flash-to-bang" ratio that helps people know when it's time to say "uncle" to Mother Nature.

The flash-to-bang method, developed by experts at the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), uses the interval between the lightning flash and the sound of the thunder to determine how far away the lightning is and when evacuation should occur.

The method counts the seconds from the time the lightning is sighted to when the clap of thunder is heard. That number is divided by five to determine how far away (in miles) the lightning is occurring. For example, if an individual counts 15 seconds between seeing the flash and hearing the bang, it can be surmised that the lightning is approximately three miles away (15 divided by five equals three).

The recommendation developed by the NCAA Committee on Com-petitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports, with assistance from the NSSL, is that the site should be evacuated when the weather monitor obtains a flash-to-bang count of 30 seconds (lightning is about six miles away). That may seem strict, but recent data from the NSSL say otherwise.

Ronald L. Holle, who studies lightning patterns for the NSSL, said a new study regarding the distance between successive flashes in thunderstorms showed a range from two or three miles in smaller storms to nearly six miles in larger storms. NSSL took the six-mile boundary and made it the minimum standard for lightning safety.

"That's when we came up with the 30-second flash-to-bang idea," Holle said.

And on the back end of storms, Guideline 1D recommends 30 minutes after the last flash of lightning or sound of thunder before resuming play. Holle said the 30-minute rule has been typical for policies regarding outdoor pools, but that until now, no policy had existed regarding the front end of the storm.

What is too close?

Holle acknowledged that not everyone is alarmed by a flash of lighting that is 30 seconds apart from the clap of thunder. Few, in fact, would be inclined to think that would be close enough to take shelter.

"The constant debate always has been how close is too close," he said. "We're constantly looking at something that's realistic compared to something that's absolutely safe. The '30-30 rule' isn't absolutely going to take care of everything, but it will take care of a large majority of situations. If you make it too stringent there will be so many false alarms that no one will follow the policy."

The idea of developing a guideline in the first place was prompted by College of William and Mary athletic trainer Brian L. Bennett, who had studied lightning as a graduate student and was convinced that it should be taken seriously.

He made a preliminary recommendation to the competitive-safeguards committee that resulted in a draft guideline that was forwarded to the NSSL for review.

Holle praised the NCAA for "taking the lead" in lightning safety. He said that prevention and education are the keys to lightning safety, and the fact that the NCAA now has established guidelines, other groups and organizations are sure to follow.

But are the recommendations realistic?

Some say the restrictions put them in a tough spot, but the committee believes if the information exists but is not provided, then the committee could be put in a tough spot. In the end, the competitive-safeguards committee sees the handbook as the best source of information -- and there can't be too much information.

Holle said whether the recommendations are followed to a "T" or not, they should at least serve to heighten awareness and make coaches, administrators and other supervisors think twice before lingering during threatening weather.

"Realistically," Holle said, "if you see lightning or hear thunder, that's your wake-up call. You stop right then and assess your situation and make your choices."