The Weather!

Automatically generated from the audio, so it may not be perfectly word-for-word.

Hi, welcome to the PTA Podcast. My name is Yvonne, and I've been a PTA volunteer for a few years now. But I'm just one of thousands of volunteers up and down the country who all want to make a difference to their schools. PTAs are becoming even more crucial in UK schools to boost budget, and I find it fascinating to talk to other volunteers about the different approaches they take. So please join me in this podcast to share information, generate ideas, debate issues, and celebrate success. And I hope that you can take something away for your PTA today. Hand on heart, I really miss organising my PTA events and fundraisers, but I can honestly say that the one thing I am so relieved to be leaving behind is the stress and worry about what the weather will be doing on the day of any big event that you are hoping to run outdoors. Let me tell you, the anxiety caused by this is real. And I became obsessed with checking hourly forecasts across a few different weather apps in the hope of trying to understand what the outcome was going to be between 3 and 5 pm on a Friday afternoon. I always felt it was such a huge responsibility to have on your shoulders that you'd spent months organising possibly your biggest event of the year, weeks advertising it and encouraging your whole school community to come along, only to have the event teetering in the balance due to the weather. And I remember feeling just despair at the decision. What should I do? Is it going to rain? Should we go ahead? What if it rains whilst we're halfway through? Will I have made the wrong decision? It was just I just felt like it was an impossible situation, impossible decision to make, and I always found it extremely stressful. Here in the UK, for anyone listening outside the UK, we have notoriously unpredictable weather. So we are actually very used to that living here. We are also very used to the weather forecasts being wrong or sometimes completely opposite of what they thought the weather would actually be doing. And I don't actually blame any of the uh weather forecasters for that. I think weather is obviously a notoriously difficult thing to predict, but it is hard when someone has said, we think it's going to be sunny, and then it's just not. You you do um you do feel a bit let down sometimes, but I but I don't I don't blame them. Of course, none of that helps us as volunteers at all when we're planning events outside. And I have definitely had my fair share of challenging weather over the years. I was chair of my PTA, and I will share some of those experiences with you in this episode. Now, we all know that as humans we have absolutely zero control over the weather on this planet. So if you are looking towards an event on the horizon, it's really important to acknowledge this fact and accept it. Just just you need to just acknowledge I cannot control the weather. Despite wishing really, really hard, you you just can't. So you have to instead focus on what you can control, what is within our control, and put our energy into that instead. And I have found over the years that the best way to do this is to make a plan, surprise, surprise. Make a plan in advance for different weather types and what you would do in each scenario. Actually, this is something that I never used to do until I had a very difficult event with lots of rain, and it was at that point that I realised how useful it would have been to have already made a weather plan during the early planning stages of my event before I was too frazzled, right at the end, and I couldn't think straight, and I lost all perspective over everything. Um, and while I still had time to make a plan and then let everybody know what the new plan was. So, this is my biggest piece of advice to you is to always incorporate a weather plan into any outdoor event that you are organizing. And the beauty of this is that you actually only need to make a weather plan once for different types of weather, and then you can roll out roughly the same plan, maybe with some tweaks, depending on what your event is, for any future events. So it is well worth an investment of your PTA time. So, how can you actually do this? Well, I would encourage you to take a walk around your school site, possibly with a senior member of staff from your school, and have a look at options for different areas on your school site which may offer protection or shelter from the rain, the wind, and the sun. Obviously, you need to remember that shade from the sun alters over the course of a day, so do bear that in mind. What's sunny in the morning may be shady in the afternoon, and vice versa. So it's good to kind of bear that in mind. And you know, if you can, if you have time, maybe check the school site in the morning and check it in the afternoon and have a look at lunchtime as well. If you're ever going to be holding an event, maybe over the weekend, which is at lunchtime. That's when the sun is the most intense, and there is likely to be a little shade, but you might still be able to find some shade at that point. The reason for taking a member of school staff with you is that you will also be able to ask them questions then and there on which areas you can use and where the nearest toilets are and where the nearest source of power is, and if there's water, like if there's an outside tap or something like that. Um, and to have that person with you as you walk around, um, you can have hopefully a really good discussion with them over what um areas outside will work and what won't, and what's too far away, and what's not safe for the children, that kind of thing. So you kind of hopefully get that all ironed out in one go. And then once you have looked at the outside, it's a good idea to go inside the school with your member of staff and discuss the inside options too with them. So at the end of the meeting, you will have evaluated the inside and the outside areas all together and have agreement with a staff member over which areas you could potentially use inside and potentially outside. And then I personally would follow this up with an email to confirm it in writing to ensure that there wasn't any misunderstanding. If you've had like a long discussion, sometimes messages can get lost in that, can't they? Um, and at that point as well, you can copy other members of staff in and other members of your PTA team as well, so everybody's clear what um what areas are available to your events. And then this is the information that you can use to make your weather plan. And like you would be talking to your school about your event planning, make sure you also share the weather plan so everyone is aware and any changes necessary to the plan can be made in advance by cross-checking with the school calendar to ensure that nothing is clashing in those areas at the same time. So, for example, I had an event that was always going to be inside. I hastened tired, it was a winter fair, it was always going to be inside, and at that point, my children at the school were in key stage two, so they weren't involved in the nativity play. And so, because they weren't involved in the nativity play, that kind of slipped my mind, and I forgot that there would be a stage that had been put up in the hall for the nativity, and this so what my school does is they put the stage up for rehearsals and then they just leave it there until the performance and then it comes down. And I my winter fair happened to be taking place uh just whilst the stage was up in the hall. My winter fair was going to be in the hall, and our hall is not very big, and the stage does take up quite a lot of space. Um, and unfortunately, they clashed. Um, I didn't know about it. The teacher that was helping me with logistics and things, she was actually off sick, and so it wasn't really in her mind either, and so we had to very quickly go in the day before and dismantle the stage for the fair and then put it back up after the fair for the ready for the nativity the next day. So we did manage to sort that problem out, but um, if we had cross-checked with the school calendar, then it wouldn't we would have known about it in advance, let's say, and and it wouldn't have been a last-minute hurdle to overcome, which is the most stressful hurdle of all, isn't it? If it's comes at the end of your organization where you think you've got everything done, and then somebody throws something in like that. So, as usual, with your PTA and your school, it's all about clear and well-timed communication. But I'm sure you already know that with other events you've done. If you are new to being on the PTA, then yes, you have to have good, clear communication with your school at all times, really, and that really helps your relationship with your school. So, yes, if you make an alternative weather plan for an event, when you've made that plan, just cross-check with someone at the school so they can look in the school calendar and make sure nothing is going to interfere with your plan B, your backup plan, because then um that will create extra stress that you just don't need on top of uh already having to change your plans to move to your plan B. So, yes, do do a bit of uh cross-checking on that one. One is what it will do to your event, and the other one is how it will affect the attendance at your event. And I think it's important to recognise the latter, the attendance, and to try to address that in your marketing about the event. So I'm going to try and address that as we talk about the different weathers that can affect your event. I'm going to highlight what you could do to minimize the impact on the day and what you could do to try and ensure your event can still go ahead. Now, there might be occasions where the weather is just so dire or so extreme that it may be impossible to actually hold the event that you have planned. This is, of course, the worst case scenario after months of planning and hard work and marketing and everything. It is an extremely hard decision to cancel an event completely, but sometimes you have no choice. And as you know, if you've listened to my episode six, I had an event, a big event, like a summer fair, um, which I had to cancel three times. I can laugh about it now, but at the time it wasn't funny at all and uh was incredibly stressful. And only one of those three times actually was due to the weather. The other uh times were um because of COVID, and then uh the late Queen passed away, so we were in a state of mourning as a country, and it would did not feel appropriate to hold the event, so um, so I had to cancel it three times. And I go into all the gory details about that. So if you want to listen to episode six, do have a listen. Uh I also talk about how it affected me because it did have a very big impact on me as a PTA chair, having to uh cancel so many times and then try and resurrect it so many times as well was just really quite mentally draining. Um so, yes, if you would like all the details on what happened and how we coped and whether we actually had the event in the end or not, then uh do listen to episode six. If you do need to cancel, firstly, I think it's better to use words like postpone instead of cancel. And secondly, it's vital that you book a new date as soon as you can and get that date out to everyone as soon as you can. Even in the email where you've said we're gonna have to postpone. If you can put the new date in there, that is fantastic. So people can get it straight in their diaries. And then you and your team have a new schedule to work towards. Hopefully, hopefully, you can just package everything up that you've already done and leave it until the new date. And then the next task, once you've done that, is to try and reconfirm all the volunteers you had booked in as soon as possible, because actually that is the hardest part of cancelling or rearranging an event, is to, you know, if you've spent ages scraping your school community for volunteers, which is really hard, you know. We all know how difficult that is, and you've got your volunteers lined up, and then you have to postpone. One of the hardest things is then when you have your new date, is that some of those volunteers may no longer be able to come to your event, and so hopefully a majority of them still can, but you may be in the situation where you need to try and get some new volunteers, um, which is obviously not ideal, but I think that I mean, certainly in my experience when I had to cancel that event three times, the school community was sympathetic, and um you know, I did explain in emails that um not all of our volunteers can make the new date, so we're looking for some more people, so just be really honest about it, and uh hopefully you'll get some other people volunteering. And if you don't, for your new date, you'll just have to slightly amend what you had on offer. But um, it is not an easy thing, it is not a nice thing to have to do, it really is a last resort, but sometimes you just have no choice. That's that's what you've got to remember. Uh, anyway, we are not going to dwell too much on cancelling outright, as that really is the worst case scenario, and instead, we're going to look at some weather types, uh, how they can impact attendance and how they can impact your event and what you can do about it. So, the first weather we're going to consider is rain. And this might be the most dreaded weather type, especially at this time of year in the summer, when we are all hoping for sunny weather for beautiful summer events, with people kicking back with ice creams and drinks and just having a lovely time. We don't want it to rain. We don't want it to rain on our parade. So, firstly, if the forecast is showing rain, I'm going to say to you, don't panic if it shows rain. Do some more investigating. Because if that little weather app has just got a little rain cloud with some rain on it, it's actually not telling you the full picture of the weather that day. So you need to do some more investigating. You need to have a look on some various weather apps and look at first of all, what time is the rain likely to start and how long will it be for. And secondly, have a look at how much rain there is actually going to be. So uh some of the weather apps that I use, they actually predict how many millimetres of rain is going to fall per hour. Um, and you can see if that's going to be light rain or heavy rain. Obviously, heavy rain, uh you're not going to want to be standing outside in heavy rain. But if the rain is light and it's a short duration of rain, or it looks like it's going to be, then that might be fine for you to go ahead with your event as it is, or if the rain looks a bit heavier, you might have to adapt your plan slightly. I think based on my own experience again, um, I can't actually remember which event it was now. Um, but there was another another summer event that I was watching the forecast for. I was watching it for the whole week. We had our event on the Friday, I was watching it all week, and it was changing every day, honestly. Uh, it would show rain and then it wouldn't show rain, and then it would show heavy rain, and then it'd be light rain, and then no rain, and I was just all over the place. And even on the even the day before the event, I was still checking it and I still felt like I didn't know what to do. So, and it was really stressful. Um, so based on that experience, I think what I would say to myself, if I could go back in the past and tell myself, is to give it, I think it's important to give yourself a cut-off date and a cut-off time to make a decision about what is happening. And once you have made that decision, I think it's helpful to everybody, including yourself, if you are the chair or the uh lead organizer of this particular event. You have to uh make that decision and then stick to that decision and let everyone know what the decision is, communicate it to everyone that this is the plan now. We're going with this plan, whether it's your original plan or an amended plan, whatever the plan is, you need to make a decision and stick to it and commit to it, and then you just follow the new plan. Um, if it if the weather looks awful, if the forecast looks like rain, you think it is going to rain on the day, then make sure you also tell your parents separately, especially on an email or however you uh find it best to communicate with your parents, do confirm that you are going ahead and ask them to support you. You know, you need to say that this has been something we've been organizing for months. We're hoping for a fantastic day of fun, everyone coming together. Yes, it could rain. We have some contingency plans, but do come along and support us, we'll be going ahead anyway. I think it's really important to send that message out to confirm that it's going ahead because then anybody who thought they may not come because it's raining might actually turn up. Um so yeah, I do think it's important to confirm that. So if it is raining or it's a bit rainy, how could that affect your attendance? So it could affect your attendance in that people may just decide not to come at all. So, as I've just said, it's best to advertise that you are going ahead and advertise that you have a wet weather plan so people know perhaps that it is sheltered from the rain. If you're moving everything inside, you can tell people we are completely sheltered from the rain, it's going to be fine. So they can still come along. And if it is a summer event, hopefully it will still be warm even though it's raining. So actually, it's not gonna be a horrible cold wind when you're going out, it's actually just a bit wet. Um, one thing to be aware of is that people might be less likely to linger at your event, so you might find that people are leaving earlier than you had hoped. So if you have planned a two-hour fate, for example, people might come for about an hour, then they might leave. Um, that is a tricky situation. Um, obviously, you can't um make people stay for two hours, um, which they may have done if it had been really sunny weather, but you can try and encourage them um to do that with with what you offer. Uh, and another thing to bear in mind is that inside spaces can get slippery with lots of wet footprints. So if people are coming in from it being outside in the rain, then yeah, floor spaces may get wet. If you have created a situation where you've got some inside things going on and also some outside things, then a lot of people walking in and out obviously will make it even wetter. So you need to make sure that you add that to your risk assessment and see if you could minimize that in any way. Could you get some more mats from somewhere, borrow some from from your own house and take them in just to kind of get the the make sure the wet footprints don't travel um too much. So, yeah, you'll just have to see if you can um uh make that any better. Maybe change the way that people come into school, maybe go in the main entrance where there is light. To be a big floor mat that they can walk over. You need to have a look and see what you can do. And obviously at the event, you just follow your wet weather plan that you have already made. Can you move stalls inside or can you use gazebos? If the rain isn't too heavy, maybe some of your stores can still be outside, but you could just cover them with a gazebo. If you do have stalls outside, try and make sure they're not too far away from the main building or each other or the main centre of the event, so people will still want to visit them. If it's too far away, people just might not walk there in the rain, they might just not be bothered to do it. And then you've got your poor volunteers stuck out the other side of the playground, feeling quite miserable. So if you do have some stores outside, but most of the activities inside, just try and make sure that there are plenty of arrows and signs to show your customers where they can go. Also, that's important if your layout of your summer event is different to normal. So if you're normally all across the school playground because it's sunny and this is the first time you've had to implement a wet weather plan, people might not know where to go and find your stores. So make sure you've got plenty of signs to point people in the right direction. Another thing to be aware of, even if it's still warm, that with rain it can often feel colder or you perceive it to be colder. So if you have something like ice creams or slushies or something like that, they may not be as popular as you'd hoped. Maybe hot drinks might be more popular. Um, I know it's really hard to make any last-minute changes, but if you can consider it, or maybe you've already incorporated those into your wet weather plan, it might be handy to just be aware of that. Although I have to say, as a mum of three children, in my experience, children are always up for ice cream and slushies no matter what the weather. So perhaps you don't have a perhaps you might not have a problem there. And of course, any leftovers could be used for a quick sale after school one day. So if you don't sell all the ice creams you bought, there might be a day the week after where it's quite sunny and you might be able to shift what you've bought then. Uh, and finally, just another couple of things to flag. Um, if it is raining, just really think about um what stalls are rainproof and what stalls would be quite badly affected by the rain. So obviously, if you have a secondhand book store, for example, you don't want that to get wet because the books will be damaged. Um, so you might wish to have a think about which stalls would go inside, which stores could potentially still be outside. And the other thing for a risk assessment, as well, if you is if you have any electrical things, you need to make sure they're very safe and secure if they're anywhere near the rain outside. But I'm sure you will have thought of that. So those are some things to think about uh if you have rainy weather to consider. The next weather type we're going to talk about is the sun and the heat. Uh, here I am talking about temperatures over 25 degrees Celsius here in the UK. Um, anything below that, we're absolutely fine. Anything above that, you might start, you might need to start um putting in some different measures. So if the forecast is for beautiful sunshine and it's quite hot, I think it's unlikely that this will have a large impact on attendance at your event. But this does depend on the needs of individual families and also exactly how hot the temperature is going to be. Um, at the event itself, you will want to be ensuring all of your stalls are in a shady area, or at least have part of them part of the stall, not part of the stalls, just part of the stall in the shade, so that the stall holder can stand in the shady part of their stall if they wish to. Um and of course, if it is really hot and there is little shade in your school uh outside space, you might want to put some of your stalls inside if it's going to be incredibly hot and sunny. So uh when you do your little walk around the school site, you need to be looking for shady areas and also shady areas which are close together, because again, we don't really want your event spreading out way too far apart from itself. So, shade, obviously, shade from buildings, trees, gazebos do offer some shade, but it can still get very hot under a gazebo because it kind of traps the heat, if you like, but they do offer shade, and of course, as I've already mentioned, remember that shade moves during the day. So if you set up stalls in the morning in a shady spot, they might not still be shady in the afternoon when you actually come to the event. So that's why making a plan in advance so you know where those shady spots are can be really valuable at that point. So on the day, you need to plan to bring extra sun cream for everyone and have a volunteer who is just responsible for providing cold drinks to all the stall holders, all your other volunteers. I did this as a summer fate because I couldn't um because I was managing the event, I also couldn't be responsible for taking water around to everyone. So I allocated it to somebody else, um, which was really great because I knew then that I didn't have to worry about keeping everyone hydrated. Somebody else was taking care of that. So I I actually allocated that to a person and they um made sure that all the volunteers had some water and um any other cold drinks that they needed. Something else which you need to put into your plan um is to keep things I'm reading my notes here, and this sounds so obvious, but it's something that unless you have experienced it, you might not actually think of. Um so is to keep things which will melt out of the sun. It sounds really obvious, but during setup, it's definitely worth a special walk around your event to check that nobody has accidentally left something in a sunny area which has the potential to melt. Um, so this actually happened to me um at a summer event a few years ago before COVID, and we had the best weather for a summer fate. It was absolutely gorgeous weather, possibly slightly too hot, um, but it was beautifully sunny, and I remember our summer fates were only ever two hours long, okay? Um and I remember halfway through the event somebody coming up to me saying, Well, my prizes have melted for my game. I was like, Oh, have they? Um, because I think her game stall had haribos, little tiny packets of haribows as prizes, and she said, Yes, they've all melt, they've gone liquid. And I said, Oh, can I see? Um so I went over to her stall, and yes, all her tiny packets of haribo were now filled with like multicoloured rainbow liquid of the tiny haribos that had melted because they'd just been left in the sun and nobody had thought that they might melt, um, and they had melted. So that was something that I had never seen before, and obviously I didn't uh think that that would happen. So it wasn't on our plan to make sure the haribos were kept out of the sun. And obviously, chocolate has a very low melting temperature, so you do need to be careful. So after that, um I made sure that if it was going to be hot, I provided some cool bags to keep prizes in sweet prizes in, just in case. And in fact, I went to an event last weekend, which was like a um a just a little local event here where people bring their um classic cars and there was a few like you know, fun stores, a bit of a fate atmosphere, and um my child did a treasure hunt, and the prize was some chocolate, and the lady who was in charge of the treasure hunt, when we gave our answer sheet in, she appeared with a cool box um and whipped out a tin of um quality streets so he could choose a prize. And I just looked at her and I thought, ah, you you're an experienced volunteer, you've been through that this before and know that chocolate can melt. And I was very impressed that she had already sorted out her cool box for her prices. So, yes, just try and think: is this going to melt? Is it going to affect the store? You just have to have that at the back of your mind. Something else to consider is you are likely to sell more ice creams and slushies and cold drinks when it's really hot. So if you are just buying your ice creams the day before, um, you don't need to worry, they probably will all sell. You'll be fine. Um, I've already mentioned that it if it is very hot, it might be good to move some stalls inside if there's not enough shade. Um, you might wish to consider if you have a stall where children are going to be sitting down doing a craft or something like that, where they're going to be in one place for a long time, that's probably the type of stall that you'll want to move inside. Um, some stalls will be absolutely fine outside, uh, you'll just have to have a look down your list, really. And another option is to consider if it is going if the forecast is just to be so so hot, like 30 or something. Um, another option is to move the event to earlier in the day when it is unlikely to be as hot. Now I don't say this lightly because obviously changing the time of an event you've planned for a long time affects your volunteers and it affects people attending. So this is not um an easy thing to do, but if it is going to be extremely hot and the other option might be actually postponing because it's going to be too hot, then if you can move it to earlier in the day, then it's something to consider and discuss with the school and discuss with your PTA team. But uh yeah, there are just a few things to be aware of in the sun and the heat there, and um, but you know, generally we all wish for a nice dry sunny day, don't we, for our lovely summer events. Okay, the third weather type I'm going to discuss just quickly is snow and ice. Now, the important impact here is whether it's actually safe for volunteers and attendees to travel to and from the event safely, as snow and ice tends to affect the UK in the winter time, maybe the springtime, and it's so if you have an event, then you've probably already planned it as an indoor event, so you don't need to worry about moving it inside from outside because it's probably already been planned like that. So you need to consider whether it's safe for people to get to your event. Obviously, consider people who are driving, but also um think about people who are walking or walking from their parked car that they've just driven there into your building. Could be really icy, could be really slippery, something to be aware of. And then also consider: is it going to be safe for people to get home afterwards? Could it start snowing whilst your event is on? What could the impact of that be? Um, and also hot drinks will sell well at a snowy, icy event. So, yes, um the the actual impact on your actual event is quite small, I would say, but the the thing you have to consider is safety of everybody getting in and out and whether they will actually come along if it's if it's a really bad forecast. So that's all I have to say, really, on snow and ice. Uh I've never run an event that's been affected by snow and ice. So um maybe if you're in Scotland where you get more snow and ice than I do down in Wiltshire, perhaps you um have to take uh more decisions about that on a regular basis. So um yeah, if you have had an event um that has been disrupted by snow and ice, do let me know and let me know how you handled it and whether you have any tips for anyone else. And the final weather type I'm going to talk about today is the wind. Now, I actually think this is the hardest weather to deal with because I think you get lulled into a full sense of security. As on the forecast, if it shows wind, it's normally also dry, it's not going to rain, and it could even be sunny at the same time as it's windy. So you might not prepare a contingency plan for wind. Um, but I would encourage you to, based on my experience. So wind is highly unlikely to affect attendance at an event unless it's a proper storm, in which case it won't might not be safe to travel, and I suspect you would have postponed if that's the case. So if it's just a bit windy, people will still be able to make it to your event. But wind, I have found, can be really problematic at an outside event. It can play havoc with any gazebo or other shelters you might have put up to protect yourself from the sun, and it can damage them. Um so we have, I mean, as a family and as a PTA, we have been through a lot of gazebos over the years which have um been damaged by the wind. Obviously, gazebos are expensive, and um some of them are not very um well made, and but you can't always buy a really sturdy gazebo because you might not be able to afford it. So those ones which are kind of pop-up gazebos tend to really struggle in the wind, and once something has bent um through wind damage, I um I know it's very difficult to repair that. So do bear in mind the effect it could have on gazebos that you own. Um, and you know, replacing those could be expensive later on. And it can make wind can make things extremely difficult for volunteers on stalls. So things will get blown over or blown away. For example, if you have set up a tin can alley as a game, it just empty hollow tin cans could just get blown over by the wind, which is really annoying. I don't know if you've ever volunteered on a stall in the wind where it keeps getting blown over again and again. It is the most frustrating thing. Um, and if you have anything lightweight, it can just get blown away. Um if you have displays of things, if you have I mean, I I have talked on a different episode about stalls you can make using A4 paper. If you have a lot of papers on your stall, they might you might have to weigh them all down with something, it can get very irritating. And I did actually have a very tricky time with the wind at one of my summer fates. I think actually it was the last summer fate that I organised, um, which I haven't done an episode on, which I'm going to do an episode on, but it was my festival of nature, and it was really windy. It was sunny, it was very sunny, but it was very windy. And I was very lucky and that one of the teachers at the school made some beautiful little vases of um wildflowers for us to put on all the tables, uh all the stalls, and she had um collected all the flowers, I think from her garden, and put little pots with water in and put the flowers in um on each stall as we were setting out the stalls, and then of course the wind just blew them over because they didn't wear anything. And so when the volunteers were actually putting their things out on the stalls, all the tops of the tables were all wet because all the water had gone all over the tables, um, which was really annoying because some of the stalls we had put the stuff out on and then added the flowers, and the water from the flowers had just gone all over the game or whatever it was. Um and every time we stood them back up, they just blew over again. So it was a real shame because the display looks really beautiful and it and it kind of um drew the whole event together because all the stalls had the same flowers on, but unfortunately the wind, the stupid wind, um messed it all up for us. Um and everything we had tried to set up, you know, the normal stalls you would normally have at Summer Fate, we had to, you know, really rethink them and make sure they weren't gonna blow away. Um and um it was just really incredibly frustrating actually. So um something else did happen at that event, which I will cover in the episode, but but if uh you want to look out for it, it is another example of an event that's all went wrong. Um it was it was oh it ended really badly. It rained. I it had we had one of those um horrible, what feels like a tropical thunderstorm. The first hour was brilliant sunshine with wind, and then of course the wind was actually you know the start of the storm which was coming in, which I hadn't realised. So um, yeah, that's how my event ended, months of organisation. Anyway, I will talk about that in detail in a future episode. Um so if you have uh a windy forecast, again, if it says wind on your forecast, do a bit of investigating, look at how fast the wind is going to be moving to see if it's really going to be affecting your event. When you do your walk around the school, um see which areas again could be sheltered from the wind, because they depending where the wind is coming from, you might be able to find a sheltered spot. And maybe avoid using those gazebos. You don't want to damage something that you have spent ages saving up for and fundraising for. So do really consider: do you need to put those gazebos out? Is it better instead maybe to put those stores inside or in a sheltered spot so that you protect your assets there? Um, and if you can, maybe you plan ahead to bring extra things to weigh stuff down on your table. So bring some rocks from your garden or something like that, something heavy so that nothing is going to blow away and you'll have to chase it across the playground because that is just really frustrating. So those are the four different weather types I wanted to talk about, and I think the key message here across all of those different things is to make sure that you have incorporated the weather into your planning at an early stage while you still have the energy to think about it rationally, because right at the end, a week before your event is not the time to suddenly have to make a plan B because the forecast is looking bad. Um, each time you have a planning meeting, if you have made a weather plan, um, each time you have a planning meeting, just make sure that it's on the agenda each time to talk about, just to make sure that um anything that needs to be done for the plan B is being done. Um, and as obviously, as you get closer to the event, you can you can see how the weather is panning out. So just just try and keep it in everyone's mind that um you need to keep checking the weather and that um it may involve um re-jigging your event a bit according to your plan. You might be lucky and not need to do anything at all, and that's really great. It's not a waste of time to put a weather plan in place, let me tell you that. It it feels like it it could be, but honestly, it isn't. And as I said before, once you have written a plan for what to do if it's really sunny, what to do if it's rainy, what to do if it's windy, you can roll that out again and again because your school site is not going to change. The classrooms inside your school are not going to change, so you just need to tweak it for the event and um it's ready to go, really. Um, but yeah, do keep in touch with the weather as you go along your event planning so it's not a horrible surprise at the end when you're trying to firefight all those last-minute hiccups that will inevitably come along. You don't want the weather to be one of them, you want to already have a plan and then decide on your cut-off date for a decision, get everybody on board so that it doesn't just rest on one person's shoulders. I think that's also a really important point to make. Make the decision as a team so that you can all take uh responsibility for it and support each other so that it's not just one person's decision and just stick to the plan, even if it was gonna be rainy and now it's sunny. Just stick to your rain plan, okay? Because if it's sunny, people can just naturally drift outside anyway, and the stores are going to be fine if they're inside or outside in the sun. It doesn't matter. So, um, yeah, be be confident, be assertive, stick to the plan, let everybody know, and then hopefully your event can go ahead after all that hard work, those weeks and months of planning, asking for volunteers. All that jazz, um, you can still have your event and do your fundraising. And that's all I wanted to say about the dreaded weather in this episode. Uh, a couple of other things I wanted to let you know about. I have recently updated my website. So if you haven't been to my website for a little while, why don't you have a look around? I have tried to lay it out better so that it's easier for you to find things. I have um updated my photos and um some of the links there. So do go and have a look and see what's new. Um also this uh weekend or is it this weekend? Um no, just after this weekend, the 15th of June is the last day for you to send me your um review on the hive. Oh, in fact, Monday, Monday the 15th. Um, so I have put a link to the um Google review form that you can fill out to let me know what you thought about it. Um I have only had three responses so far, so if anyone else has read it and would like to tell me, then that would be fantastic to get some more views and opinions on that. So please go to my website and have a look there. I have also shared the link on my Facebook page, and if anyone's on my mailing list, I have emailed the link out. So if you do want to join me, I'm join my mailing list, then I do um send an email out when there's a new episode to listen to, but also I'll keep you updated with the book club news. So when the deadlines are to send me your stuff and then which book we're reading next and when we're starting, that kind of thing. So um, so yeah, do join my mailing list. I promise I don't send loads of emails because quite frankly, I don't have the time to send loads of emails, so um you won't be bombarded with emails from me. Anyway, I sincerely hope your summer event planning is going well. I sincerely hope that you have the weather that you want on the day of your event. I'm gonna keep my fingers crossed for you and um hope you can keep your sanity. Listen to my episode, I think it's episode 25, where I talk through a um uh survival guide of how to survive the planning of your big event um organisation. Um, you might find some useful tips in there if you're feeling the dreaded uh overwhelm, if you're at the overwhelm stage and you don't really know what to do, then I do have some tips in there for you of things that have helped me in the past when I have reached the overwhelmed stage of organising a big event. Anyway, if you want to uh give me any feedback on um how weather has affected your events and what you've done about it, then do drop me an email. It's hello at PTAPodcast.com and I look forward to chatting to you soon. Bye.