Rainchecks.
I was supposed to play in a friendly little golf tournament today. Our tee time was at 10am, and 5 or 6 groups had gone off ahead of us. However due to thick fog – you couldn’t see more than 50m at best – the starter was leaving extra time between each group and we were scheduled to tee off at 11am. But just as we were getting ready to go (with a 7-iron in hand instead of the usual 3 wood!) the ominous groan of thunder filled the sky and the organizers pulled the plug. It was probably just as well because I’ve been sick as a dog all day and so probably wouldn’t have done myself any favors marching about in the rain for 4 or 5 hours…but I felt bad for the volunteers who worked hard to organize the event, and the golf course reimbursed all the green fees and cart rentals – probably about €3000 in all. Made me wonder what it would have cost to hedge against rain using WeatherBill a couple of months ago when the date was set (WeatherBill does not yet offer prices on European weather stations); of course no hedging would have got us on the course today but I’m sure it would have taken the sting out of the tournament being a wash-out for the organizers, the sponsor, the club, the participants if there had been an offsetting cash payment. I guess my point here is that the advantages of hedging – especially for small ‘community’ events has more than just financial benefits, but can have a psychological impact as well – making everyone feel less bad that the event was ruined or cancelled. (As an aside, earlier this year WeatherBill sponsored some research on the effect of climate change on playable golf days in the US.)
In other (weather-related) news, I was interested to see the Guardian publish a summary of the UK’s summer ’07 weather ‘winners and losers’. As I wrote earlier, there is clearly a market opportunity in the UK!
