Hi, Deanna!

I've danced in halls that were in the high 80s  at the start of the evening and into the 90s, and nobody died.

 I once called (in South Pasadena) when it was 95 outside at 8:00, not much cooler inside.

As a caller I tried to make the breaks between dances a little longer, encourage people to get water, make it clear I wasn't going to start the walkthrough until everybody who needed water had gotten some, and probably lost one dance out of the evening to those longer breaks.  Everybody nonetheless kept grabbing partners and lining up immediately. .

If you've got all those fans going you might consider having them blow over bowls or buckets of ice to get some additional cooling.

Do you have a good way to notify your dancers of cancelations?  Do you have to pay rent if you're canceling at the last minute due to heat?

Out here in California we don't really have any automatic cancelation rules; in New England I think there's some kinds of automatically triggered cancelations, like "if such and such road is closed from snow, we're canceled" or "if it's a snow day we're canceled".)  And our California heat probably doesn't usually come close to Atlanta's humidity levels, so I don't know if any of my experience applies.

-- Alan



On 7/21/2016 3:47 PM, Deanna Palumbo via Organizers wrote:

With the current temps in the US at an alarming high, our dance hall has been running hot, with their one A/C unit cooling to 75-78 degrees while dancing.  We keep it pretty windy, with lots of fans (quietest ones in the hall are small Lasko units and louder ones in the back).


That being said, at what point do you cancel the dance because of heat?  Dancers are already complaining and all we can do is keep it windy.  Of course, we could cut our losses if minimum capacity of dancers are not coming because of the heat.  In the past & at another hall, we used to cancel all of August because of heat, but I don't know how you can make that call because you really don't know how it will feel (or how many dancers will attend) until you get there.


Deanna Palumbo
Chattahoochee Country Dancers, Atlanta, GA



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