The Top 4 Benefits of a Total Weather Safety Solution for Schools

If you work in a school system, we know your job isn’t an easy one. Every year, it seems like more and more obstacles get in the way of safely educating and enriching your students. While athletic teams are a great outlet for students and benefit them in many ways, outdoor recreational activities also put them in Mother Nature’s way.

Coaches not only have to teach the game to students and help them improve, but also have to keep them safe from avoidable weather-related injuries. Lightning strikes at sports fields are unfortunately a common experience that often result in the injury or even death of student-athletes, spectators, or even coaches.

Luckily, there are a few choices for a total weather safety solution for schools available today. These types of solutions give educators and coaches a peace of mind while protecting students, visitors, and staff from lightning, slippery roads, and more. They tend to include:

• Hyperlocal real-time storm tracking & forecasting
• Outdoor lightning alerting
• Public weather display
• Customized alerts
• Personalized weather portal
• 24/7 Meteorological support
• Managed weather equipment

Keep reading to find out why your school should upgrade its overall severe weather safety policy with a total weather solution.

Outdoor Event Safety

The first main benefit of a total weather safety solution for schools is peace of mind during outdoor events. Throughout the school year, there are plenty of academics, athletics, and social outdoor events happening on campus during and after school that require severe weather planning.

The first situation that comes to mind is athletic events. Outdoor sports like baseball, track, football, and soccer all put students, coaches, and spectators at risk for a severe weather incident. These threats change with the seasons. Therefore, it’s important to have a total weather safety solution for schools that includes multiple datasets of real-time, hyperlocal weather data.

The biggest severe weather threat for schools is lightning. Lightning strikes the Earth’s surface over 100 times per minute, including your campus. To put it in context, we have seen that some school districts see over 100 cloud-to-ground strikes per year.

In the past, horrific lightning accidents and even deaths have occurred while students were practicing or playing sports. Faulty alerting systems, outdated lightning detection policies or solutions, persistent coaches, or a total lack of severe weather safety planning are all to blame. Using a severe weather solution that integrates total lightning data (both in-cloud and cloud-to-ground strikes) offers the best alerting lead times for schools. Outdoor Alerting Systems with clear, unmistakable alerts and “all-clear” signs are also a no-brainer for schools during the late spring, entire summer, and early fall months. Also, ensuring your system uses detection technology increases its accuracy.

Severe weather isn’t just lightning. Student-athletes and spectators are also at risk for injuries due to extreme temperatures – both hot and cold. Having a weather station on campus is a great component of any effective severe weather safety solution that gives everyone real-time updates on the hyperlocal temperature and the current “real feel”.

Open Communication During Severe Weather

The next main benefit of a severe weather safety package for schools includes an open line of communication.

One of the biggest severe weather challenges the schools we’ve worked tend to have is effectively communicating risks across campus or even districts. Imagine a thunderstorm is on its way and there are sports teams scattered across campus. If only one staff member knows about this, you can only imagine the panic they must feel trying to transmit that information to everyone. How about if it is the coach? He now has to balance his wish to keep the game going versus stopping the game and following weather safety policy.

A total severe weather safety solution for schools include ways to easily communicate severe weather warnings with the administrators, staff members, students, and spectators. Using a solution that has customizable, automatic weather alerts is great because every staff member can automatically know when a dangerous weather condition is on its way. In today’s age of technology, a simple text is all it takes to keep everyone immediately informed.

Additionally, a total severe weather safety solution comes with an outdoor alerting system. These take the human element out of the decision-making process. The solution sounds the alarm immediately when a threat is detected and everyone knows to find cover. When it comes to severe weather, seconds matter.

Other aspects of a total severe weather safety solutions include ways for multiple staff members to actually watch important weather conditions in real time with advanced collaboration tools. This way, administrators can instantaneously show everyone lightning strikes or storm clouds coming in real time.

If you’d like to get started finding the perfect weather safety solution for your school, learn more about Sferic Protect. Sferic Protect is our latest weather package offering that includes all of the best products and services we have to offer. This is comprehensive school weather safety. Take a look for yourself:

Expert Decision-Making

Even with all these tools at your disposal, some situations require a little bit more information to ensure you’re making the safest decision. That’s where meteorologists come in. It’s important to entrust your school’s weather safety to a severe weather solution that includes expert advice from meteorologists. This is especially helpful during large events or during times of the year when the weather can seem unpredictable. Meteorological support tends to come with expert forecasting for those critical key events.

Not only does relying on meteorologists mean your guests are safe, but it can save money as well. Setting up large, campus-wide events can often be expensive. Some vendors don’t even honor severe weather as a reason for a refund. But, with meteorologists on your side, you can confidently make event decisions without financial regret.

Peace of Mind with Weather Safety Solution for Schools

The last main benefit of these solutions is overall peace of mind. Using a subscription-based safety package means you only have to think about it once and then you’re set. Once all hardware and alerts are installed and set up, you’ll feel more confident in your ability to protect people. If anything goes wrong, the best solutions have dedicated maintenance teams that will assist you on-site. That way, your solution constantly protects your campus from the many threats of Mother Nature.

In 2018, we are well past the point of leaving severe weather safety up to chance. Give yourself peace of mind in so you can focus on the other safety obstacles your students face.