Too Hot to Handle?
Climate Change is Real, Y'all!
Heat has become a very prominent issue on the 2022 DCI tour. We’ve had corps cancel rehearsal blocks, and move others to the middle of the night. We’ve had shows delayed an hour and a half, and other shows where it was so hot that corps performed at a standstill. What’s going on and why is it so dang hot?
Let’s Talk About The Atmosphere
Texas and Oklahoma find themselves amid what could end up being the hottest summer on record. This is due to a phenomenon called La Niña. According to Climate.gov, “El Niño and La Niña are the warm and cool phases of a recurring climate pattern across the tropical Pacific—the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or “ENSO” for short. The pattern shifts back and forth irregularly every two to seven years, and each phase triggers predictable disruptions of temperature and precipitation. These changes disrupt the large-scale air movements in the tropics, triggering a cascade of global side effects.” What this means for those who are in the US is that when the water is cooler near the equator around the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean (La Niña), it can influence the weather in and around the Southern U.S. during the winter months, causing it to be drier.
You might be wondering what effect this has on the weather in Texas 6 months later. Here’s the problem. With the lack of winter and early spring rains causing a drought, the ground is drier around this time than it usually is. When the sun shines down on the dry ground, less energy is expended evaporating the water that is typically there, and more of it becomes heat. Then, on top of that, an area of High Pressure sat over the central U.S. in a phenomenon called a “heat dome”. The High-Pressure areas push air out away from the center of the air mass, and the air that is above it sinks to replace it. The air above doesn’t contain a lot of moisture, which means that there’s less potential for precipitation (aka rain). This compounds the issue of the dry soil, especially without any water around to cool things down.
These factors when combined with the globally rising temperatures form a brutal one-two punch that has impacted essentially every corps that traveled through Texas or Oklahoma this year. A particularly challenging aspect of this is that at night, temperatures were barely getting down into the 80s, so waiting for the sun to go down to get out on the field only provided so much relief.
How Did It Affect Corps?
Essentially every DCI show on the Texas Tour, along with those in Oklahoma, had its start time pushed back to either sunset or close to it. The notable exception was San Antonio, and even then, most warm-up locations were moved inside to manage members’ heat exposure. It got to the point in Lawton, OK on 7/19 that because it would barely break 100°F by the start of the show, every corps ended up doing a standstill performance. The temperature didn’t get below 90° until after midnight. The same evening in Broken Arrow, OK, there was a large amount of discussion as to whether that show would suffer the same fate. For a variety of reasons, including but not limited to the air temperature being slightly cooler, as well as the stadium being oriented so that the field would be in the shade much earlier than Lawton’s, the show proceeded with the pushed-back schedule.
In addition to the effects on shows, many corps either held a significant portion of their afternoon rehearsal blocks inside or canceled them altogether. Quite a few corps delayed their evening rehearsals to after sunset, and a couple of corps reportedly were rehearsing until midnight or later to reduce the possibility of heat-related illness.
What’s Next?
So as we finish up this swing and move across the south to Atlanta and Winston-Salem, it’s time to take a look at what the future holds for Texas Tour. Because La Niña fluctuates back and forth with its counterpart El Niño, this specific issue won’t be a problem every year. That being said, La Niña isn’t exactly something that happens once every hundred years. As mentioned above, the ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) happens anywhere from a two to seven-year timeframe so this is something that we can expect moving forward.
As temperatures go up, is the Texas Tour sustainable in its current spot on the Events Calendar? Or will DCI have to move the Southwest shows up in the line-up so that they don’t have to worry about severe modification or cancellation every year? The climate is changing, and we’ll have to change with it.
Saturday Night Lights is currently GEM’s Managing Editor. He has been involved in the Pageantry Arts for over a decade, as a performer at the highest level, an instructor, and a fan. You can find him on Twitter at @SatNightLites. He currently lives in Florida with his partner and their two dogs.