Kansas City Royals: Bad Baseball and Bad Fan Safety

My son, son-in-law, and two granddaughters were at the Angels vs. Royals game this afternoon.

The Royals played bad baseball and lost 7-3.

But, even worse, was the Royals' lack of state-of-the-art weather safety for their fans. Because the Royals have not traditionally done well in this regard, I kept my family informed and, as the rain moved in, they moved under cover. Here is the lightning "play-by-play:"

State Line Road is a very well known road in the Kansas City area that separates the states of Kansas and Missouri. The lightning was 7.7 miles southwest of the stadium. The game continued.

I knew the lightning was there because of new technology that reveals in-cloud, as opposed to cloud-to-ground, lightning. It uses the new GOES satellites. The image is below.

The lightning is circled. Royals Stadium is at the tip of the arrow. Note: conventional lightning detection is cloud-to-ground and nothing was shown.

Radar does NOT depict lightning. The display program I am using
combines radar and cloud-to-ground lighting but no C-T-G
lightning was detected (blue rectangle).

This new technology is wonderful because weather research shows that, almost always, the first bolts are in-cloud which means they can serve as a warning of cloud-to-ground lightning danger.

Sure enough, minutes later, from Brandon inside the stadium.

The GOES satellite showed the lightning almost above the stadium (orange dots).

Remember: As shown in the image above the lightning was over or almost directly above the stadium! They put their fans and players in danger by not sounding a warning. I asked if they made an announcement:

I was watching on television. There was no disruption of play and the announcers never mentioned the hazard. And, it was not a false alarm. Dangerous cloud-to-ground lightning commenced just northeast of the stadium (circles).

The umpires, who are in charge of the game, have their backs to storms that, like these, approach from the southwest. Even if they wanted to observe the sky, the grandstands block their view. During the day, it is difficult to see lightning.

It is long past time for every major league team and major college to employ a commercial weather company that has these state-of-the-art tools. Weather safety authority should be taken from the umpires and on-field officials and given to someone directly in touch with the weather experts.