Mothing Zone Cancelled for August

We have made the decision to cancel the planned weekly Mothing Zone events for the remainder of the summer. We may still do mothing programs, they will just be on a week-by-week basis rather than a series of programs.

Why are we making this decision, afterall, our Mothing Zone is the most unique evening activity in the Hocking Hills, and the program that we consider one of the most important that we do. Last night, for the third time this year, bad weather, that was supposed to be long gone by our set up time of 8pm, negatively impacted the event.

On three separate occasions this season, weather forecasters have called for rain showers and storms during the afternoon of mothing day, with the storms being forecasted to be long gone by 8pm, and a distant memory by our 9pm start time. Instead, those storms did not arrive until well into the evening. In the case of last night, the storms that had been forecast to arrive between 3 and 6pm did not arrive until 9:30, and lasted until 10:45. As reminder, our mothing programs run from 9pm until midnight. We did not get to the sheets until close to 11, and the program did not end until after 1:30 in the morning. If I had received actual accurate forecasting, I would have cancelled the event. My staff did not get home and in bed until after 2:30am.

For this event, knowing the evening’s weather is critical. We use very expensive equipment that should not be sitting out in the rain, which is exactly what it was doing last night. We have visitors who travel, sometimes a few hours, to come to our mothing programs. I do not want these folks driving two hours and paying $6 to sit on my porch in the rain for an hour and a half, which is exactly what they were doing last night.

Once again, last night was not a first for this season. I have now fully lost all faith in the weather forecasting community’s ability to predict the weather more than fifteen minutes into the future. Afterall, last night, as of 6:45pm, there was a fifteen percent chance of rain until well past midnight.

For me, this is way too stressful, feeling responsible for the safety of our equipment, staff, volunteers, and visitors when I am basing this responsibility on information, which is apparently, most likely, wrong.

We will certainly honor the commitments we have made for private mothing events for the remainder of the summer, however, moving forward please consider our weekly Saturday events cancelled. If we have a dry Saturday night that even the Weather Channel cannot misrepresent, I will announce on our website and social media that mothing is on, hopefully with several hours notice. But for now, assume the Mothing Zone is cancelled.

Sorry we have to make this call. I know our visitors really enjoy this activity as do we. But I just cannot live with this level of stress every weekend. Thanks for understanding.