Weather-Ready Rehearsals and Tabletop Drills for Winter Festivals

Weather can be a festival’s biggest wildcard – especially for winter festivals facing blizzards, ice storms, or sudden power outages. The most successful festival producers don’t leave emergency response to chance. They run through worst-case scenarios ahead of time, so that when real storms hit, every team member knows exactly what to do.

In the world of winter events – from snow-filled music festivals in the mountains to outdoor holiday markets in freezing cities – being weather-ready is a must. This guide shares decades of festival production wisdom on conducting realistic weather emergency drills. By practicing responses to blinding blizzards, slick ice storms, and unexpected blackouts, festival organisers can protect their audiences and save their event from disaster.

Anticipating Winter’s Worst: Why Plan and Drill?

Severe weather is not a distant “what if” – it’s a reality festivals around the world have faced repeatedly. In recent years, extreme weather has forced numerous high-profile festival evacuations and cancellations (pitchfork.com) (www.axios.com). Tragic incidents like stage collapses at Belgium’s Pukkelpop and the Indiana State Fair in 2011, which together claimed several lives (www.avclub.com) (www.latimes.com), were wake-up calls for the live events industry. Those disasters underscored that without robust weather contingency plans, lives are at risk.

Today, prudent festival producers work closely with meteorologists and safety experts to monitor weather forecasts and set clear thresholds for action (e.g. wind or lightning triggers). But having a written plan isn’t enough – your team needs to practise that plan. Just as artists rehearse their sets, festival safety teams must rehearse emergency responses. Tabletop exercises and scenario drills bring the plan to life, revealing gaps and ensuring everyone from security to stage crew is ready to act under pressure.

For winter festivals, the stakes can be even higher. Blizzards can shut down roads and trap attendees, ice storms can knock out power lines, and sub-zero cold can become dangerous quickly. Proactively drilling for these situations builds muscle memory that could save your festival from chaos or cancellation.

Scenario Planning: Blizzards, Ice Storms, and Power Outages

Start by identifying your worst-case winter scenarios. Common threats for cold-weather events include:

• Blizzard Conditions – Heavy snowfall combined with high winds can reduce visibility to near zero and make travel impossible. If a blizzard hits during your festival, attendees might need to shelter in place for hours (or longer) until conditions improve. Beyond stranding people, snow loads could threaten temporary structures like stages or tents. For example, at Quebec’s Winter Carnival or Japan’s Sapporo Snow Festival, organisers prepare for sudden snow squalls that could dump a foot of snow in an afternoon. Plan how to keep everyone safe and warm if a blizzard brings your event to a standstill – from opening emergency shelters to deploying snow ploughs on-site.

• Ice Storms – Freezing rain coating every surface in ice can be devastating. Stages, walkways, power lines, and vehicles all become hazards. Ice buildup can cause power failures and make ground conditions treacherous for both pedestrians and vehicles. Festivals in regions like the northeastern US, Canada, or northern Europe should drill for an ice storm scenario: What if your event space and surrounding roads turn into an ice rink overnight? Ensure you have sand/salt for paths, de-icing equipment, and a strategy to communicate delays or cancellations if the venue becomes unsafe. Remember that ice storms often collapse tree limbs and structures – consider shutting down high-risk areas preemptively if warnings arise.

• Power Loss – A utility outage or generator failure in freezing weather is a nightmare scenario. Lights and heaters go out, sound systems die, and your communication systems might fail unless you have backup power. Crowds could be plunged into darkness, which can cause panic or accidents. Drill for a total power blackout: How will you illuminate key areas (do you have battery-powered lights or flashlights for staff)? How will you continue critical communications? In one exercise, a Canadian winter music festival simulated a nighttime power loss – they discovered their staff needed better backup lighting and now equip security teams with headlamps and glow sticks for such emergencies. Don’t assume a generator will never fail; practice switching to backups and guiding attendees without power.

By visualising and scripting out these scenarios, you force your team to think through the challenges in detail. Consider timing and context as well – an ice storm hitting mid-event is different from one that strikes during load-in or as guests depart. Develop contingency plans for various timings (e.g. if a blizzard is forecast a day before, you might delay opening; if it strikes mid-show, you halt performances and shelter everyone on-site). Every scenario plan should answer: Who makes the call to pause or evacuate? How is that decision communicated? Where do people go? And what supplies or support are needed to keep people safe and calm?

Practicing Communications: Radio Calls and PA Announcements

Clear, calm communication is the linchpin of effective emergency response. In a crisis, every second counts, and confusion can cost lives. That’s why festival teams must rehearse exactly how they’ll communicate during weather emergencies – over two-way radios, public address (PA) systems, and messaging apps.

Radio drills are a great starting point. Simulate the moment a storm hits: “Wind gusts have exceeded our safe limit, we need to halt the show”. Who notifies the festival director and stage managers? Which radio channel is designated for emergency calls? Practice the radio protocol for an evacuation or weather hold. For example, many festivals use code words or specific phrases – “Code White” for snow, “Code Black” for power loss, etc. – to quickly signal an issue to staff. Ensure everyone understands the codes (or better yet, use plain language for clarity: “All staff, lightning detected – begin evacuation now”). Run drills where your team actually speaks the words into their radios. Newer staff may be shy or panicked in a real crisis; practice builds confidence and smooths out any radio discipline issues (like two people talking over each other).

At the same time, rehearse your PA announcements for the audience. These messages should be pre-scripted, concise, and reassuring. Write templates for scenarios such as:

• Weather delay (e.g. “Attention: Due to a severe storm, we are temporarily pausing the festival. Please calmly proceed to the nearest shelter indicated by staff. This is a precaution for everyone’s safety.”)
• Full evacuation (e.g. “Attention please: Due to extreme weather, we must evacuate the festival. Follow the directions of staff and exit via the main gate slowly and calmly. If you drove, return to your vehicles. If you need assistance, notify the nearest staff member.”)
• Shelter-in-place (if roads are unsafe to leave, e.g. blizzard: “Your safety is our priority. A severe blizzard is making travel dangerous. We ask all guests to remain on-site indoors until authorities indicate it’s safe to leave. Our team is setting up warming stations and hot drinks – please take care of each other and await further instructions.”)

Practice reading these scripts over the actual PA system if possible (perhaps during a soundcheck or staff-only time) to ensure they are audible and the tone is correct. In a real emergency, voice tone matters – panicked or unclear announcements can cause crowd anxiety. Some festivals even pre-record emergency messages in multiple languages, to ensure non-English-speaking attendees understand what to do.

Don’t forget about digital communication as well. Social media, festival mobile apps, and mass text or email alerts can reinforce your PA announcements. Many ticketing platforms (like Ticket Fairy’s system) allow organisers to blast urgent messages to all ticket holders. During Lollapalooza’s 2012 storm evacuation in Chicago, organizers tweeted instructions telling over 100,000 attendees to head to designated shelters (www.latimes.com) – and those early warnings helped move the crowd before the worst of the storm hit. Ensure your team knows who will manage social media or app alerts in a crunch, and have templated posts ready to go.

Rehearsing Shelter and Evacuation Procedures

Moving a large crowd to safety swiftly is a complex operation – one that absolutely benefits from practice. Tabletop drills should map out the entire flow of people during an evacuation or shelter-in-place order. Once the communication goes out, what happens next?

In an evacuation scenario, identify all exit routes and shelters available. Ideally, your plan will have multiple evacuation options: for example, “Shelter A” could be an underground parking garage or a nearby school gym, while “Shelter B” might be on-site sturdy structures or heated tents. During Chicago’s Lollapalooza storm evacuation, organizers directed crowds into three large underground garages along the adjacent streets (www.latimes.com). Because that option was pre-planned with the city, more than 100,000 people moved off the open field in minutes – and the festival could resume once the weather cleared (www.latimes.com). The lesson: have pre-arranged refuge areas and transportation, and drill how to get everyone there.

If your festival is remote (say, a snowy mountain music festival or a desert gathering), “evacuation” might simply mean getting everyone back to their cars or campsite. In those cases, make sure your parking managers and traffic control teams are part of the drill – a mass depart can cause traffic jams or accidents if not coordinated. Practice how you would stagger exits or direct vehicles. Also consider what if leaving isn’t possible: a sudden blizzard could close roads, forcing everyone to stay on site. That’s essentially what happened at Burning Man in 2023 when heavy rains turned the desert to mud and stranded tens of thousands for days (pitchfork.com). Festivals in winter should prepare for a scenario where guests have to hunker down on-site overnight. Is there an option to keep them safe and warm? Perhaps you stockpile blankets, or arrange with local emergency services for buses as mobile shelters.

For shelter-in-place drills, walk through how you would move people from exposed areas (like stages or open fields) into sturdier shelter. Assign team members specific zones to sweep, so every corner of the venue gets covered. In a tabletop exercise, you might say “Stage 2 has a heated tent nearby with capacity 300 – those audience members will be directed there by security staff Alpha team. The main stage field will be directed to the concrete expo center via gates 1 and 2”. By detailing it out, you might discover, for example, that one exit is too narrow or a tent can’t hold everyone. Better to find that in a drill than during the real thing.

Also, plan for assistive needs: in any crowd, some folks may need extra help (wheelchair users, injured people, families with small kids). Incorporate into your drill how medical teams and volunteers will identify and help those who can’t move fast in an evacuation. Perhaps you have golf carts or sleds on standby for shuttling people in deep snow.

Once you have a solid evacuation/shelter plan on paper, consider doing a partial “live” practice with your staff. While you can’t simulate thousands of attendees easily, you can have your security and volunteer teams physically walk the evacuation routes, open the gates, and gather at the shelters as if a drill is happening. This physical run-through often reveals practical snags (such as a padlock that’s rusted shut on an emergency gate, or a lighting issue along a path). One winter festival in Germany discovered during a rehearsal that the backup generator for its main hall shelter took 10 minutes to start – they promptly replaced it with a more reliable model.

Collaborating with Agencies: Invite Feedback and Support

You don’t have to do all this planning alone. In fact, involving local authorities and experts is essential for robust emergency preparedness. Well before your festival starts, convene a meeting or tabletop exercise with representatives from:

• Emergency Management Agencies – These professionals can offer guidance on evacuation routes, shelter locations, and coordination with citywide resources. Many regions have Safety Advisory Groups (SAG) or similar committees that will review your festival’s safety plan (www.hse.gov.uk). Use their expertise – they might point out, for example, that your chosen shelter lacks backup heat, or that a nearby community center could be an additional refuge.

• Meteorologists – Whether it’s a private weather service or the local government forecasters, get a weather expert involved in your planning. They can provide realistic scenario inputs (“imagine 8 inches of snow in 3 hours” or “ice accretion of 1 cm on all surfaces”) to make your drills more concrete. Leading festivals like Belgium’s Tomorrowland employ on-site meteorologists who work directly with festival control to give real-time storm updates (weather.com). For winter events, connect with your national weather agency for advance warning systems – many offer event-specific alerts.

• Police and Fire Departments – If you ever need to evacuate into public areas or call on city resources, the police and fire services must be in the loop. Invite them to critique your evacuation routes and communication protocols. They may have insight on crowd movement or can dedicate officers to assist if you do have to clear out tens of thousands of people. Joint drills with these agencies can greatly improve coordination. The best-case outcome is that your weather drill doubles as a multi-agency practice, so if a real blizzard hits mid-festival, everyone – festival security, medics, police, fire, and EMTs – all know their roles and work in unison.

• Medical Services – Your on-site medical team or ambulance providers should be part of weather drills as well. Extreme cold events lead to different injuries (e.g. hypothermia, slip-and-fall fractures). Medics can advise on where to set up triage during an evacuation (perhaps just outside a shelter entrance) and what supplies to have on hand (stock extra blankets, hot packs for hypothermia, etc.). They should also review your messaging to ensure it accounts for vulnerable groups – for instance, directing people with asthma to seek shelter from cold air.

During these collaborative tabletop sessions, encourage honest feedback. You want agencies to find holes in your plan now, not later. Perhaps the fire marshal points out that one indoor shelter is over capacity – you might then rent additional large tents or barns as backup. Or the transit authority might agree to have snow ploughs and buses stationed nearby if a major storm is forecast during your event. These partnerships often turn into lifelines when an emergency actually occurs.

An example of successful collaboration: Glastonbury Festival in the UK works year-round with its local council and emergency services, running through scenarios (floods, storms, even epidemics). They set up a unified command center on-site where all agencies sit together. This means when heavy rains turn the grounds into mud, decisions on delaying gates or dispatching tractors to pull out stuck vehicles are made jointly and efficiently – a model worth emulating.

After-Action Reviews: Learn and Improve

Running drills is only truly useful if you learn from them. Every rehearsal or tabletop exercise should end with a debrief session. Document what happened: Did everyone know their role? Were communications timely? Did the evacuation route work as expected? Identify any problems or surprises that came up. For instance, perhaps during the drill you realized the PA system didn’t reach one far corner of the festival grounds, or team members weren’t sure who had authority to cancel a performance. No detail is too small – list everything that could be improved.

Next, assign each item to an “owner” on your team and a timeline to fix it. If radio chatter was chaotic, task your communications manager to refine the radio protocol and re-train staff. If an agency suggested a better shelter location, have the operations lead update the plan and coordinate that change. Treat this process like an investment in your festival’s resilience. Some festivals even produce an official After-Action Report summarizing the drill’s lessons and planned adjustments. By circulating this report to all stakeholders (and even sharing with next year’s team if staff changes), you ensure continuous improvement.

It’s also wise to update your emergency action plan documentation with any changes immediately, so you’re not relying on memory by the time the real event happens. And don’t forget to incorporate attendee feedback if you’ve ever had a weather incident – patrons might tell you they couldn’t hear announcements or were confused where to go, which is invaluable insight for your next drill.

Finally, make drills a regular part of your festival planning cycle. Large-scale events might do a tabletop exercise annually or before each edition. Smaller festivals can still host an informal walk-through with core crew and local responders. The key is consistency – the more you practice, the more second-nature your emergency response becomes.

Remember, the mark of a great festival producer isn’t just throwing a fantastic party – it’s keeping people safe no matter what. By rigorously preparing for winter’s fury with scenario drills and collaborative planning, you’re not only protecting your festival-goers and staff, but also safeguarding the event’s reputation and longevity.

Key Takeaways

• Expect the Unexpected: Winter festivals must plan for extreme weather like blizzards, ice storms, and power blackouts. Assume it will happen and prepare accordingly.
• Run Scenario Drills: Don’t rely on theory. Conduct tabletop exercises that simulate blizzard conditions, iced-over grounds, or a full power loss. Walk through every step with your team and partners to spot weaknesses.
• Practice Communications: Rehearse emergency radio calls and public announcements. Use clear codes or plain language. Keep attendees informed with pre-planned PA scripts and utilise tools (like Ticket Fairy’s messaging) to reach everyone quickly.
• Refine Evacuation & Shelter Plans: Identify multiple shelter locations and exit routes before an emergency. Train staff on guiding crowds safely, and do on-site walk-throughs to ensure pathways and backups (generators, lights, supplies) all work.
• Collaborate with Authorities: Involve local emergency services, meteorologists, and officials in your planning. Their feedback will improve your plans, and their presence during an incident will make the response far more effective.
• Learn and Evolve: After each drill or actual weather incident, debrief and document lessons. Update your plans and assign team members to implement improvements. Continuous learning is key to safer festivals.
• Safety Over Everything: Ultimately, be ready to delay, evacuate, or cancel if conditions demand – no show is worth risking lives. With well-practiced plans, you can make those tough calls confidently, knowing your team is ready to execute and your community of festival-goers will stay safe and informed.