Umpire as weatherman

[teebob21]

While not as dramatic as yours, I too have done the magic blue rain dance.

Muggy June evening in Nebraska. Heat lightning off in the distance, rain clouds blowing to the east, but nothing threatening. As the sun goes down and the lights come up on the field, dark clouds start coming from the south, blowing to the west. Clouds moving opposite directions usually mean trouble, but I wait as there is no rain or lightning yet. We keep playing.

3rd or 4th inning, a coach swaps pitchers and while I take the subs, he asks me if I think it's going to rain. I tell him, "It could get bad at anytime." and point above to the swirling clouds. Before I say anything else: CRACK-BOOM!!! and the water comes down in curtains. Game over.

[SWFLguy]

Reminds me of a time down here when I first moved to SW FL. I had a high school game over by Lake O. It was raining in Fort Myers, and I contacted the school to see if we were going to be able to play. They said it looked good, so my partner picked me up and off we went. Rained all the way over. I swear the storm was following us. After the 90 mile drive in the rain, we were pulling into the town where the game was scheduled and his cell phone rang. It was the school informing us the game is cancelled. Swell. Drove back home in the rain too. To make matters worse, we did not even get travel pay for it. That kind is situation was fixed later.

[BretMan]

"Heat lightning" is, in fact, lightning. If it was present you shouldn't have been playing.

[teebob21]

Originally Posted by BretMan

"Heat lightning" is, in fact, lightning. If it was present you shouldn't have been playing.

Oh, I know exactly what it was. At the time, it was probably 10+ miles away. There isn't any way I could have convinced anyone to stop playing at that point.

You're from the Midwest, you know the type of clouds I'm talking about. I'm a big advocate of safety, but I can't properly express that situation on a forum.

[umpjim]

Originally Posted by BretMan

"Heat lightning" is, in fact, lightning. If it was present you shouldn't have been playing.

It is lightning but in areas where we call it "heat lightning" it's lightning well over 10 miles away which lights up the sky at night. You can see stuff 50 miles away and the actual bolts are not visible, just the illumination they produce.