Safety principles

Safety, built in
from the start.

Sports Safe watches lightning, heat, UV, and severe weather for each field and alerts the coach or athletic director who has to make the call. It was built for the person standing on the field with the whistle, and every design decision starts there.

How alerts workOur data sources

What we hold to

Our safety principles

The rules we hold to, even when they cost us more or make the product harder to build.

Official alerts are never silenced

Once a field is being monitored, important National Weather Service watches and warnings always come through. No preference toggle can mute them. Heat and UV alerts can each be turned off, and forecast storm alerts follow your lightning setting, but government warnings are not something to opt out of.

Accuracy where it counts

Where a reading drives a safety call, we choose the more accurate data even when it costs more. Lightning distances come from individual strike records rather than a cheaper merged feed, so each field gets a precise distance to the nearest strike. We keep evaluating our data sources and upgrade them as better options prove themselves.

A monitoring aid, not a guarantee

Sports Safe supports the person making the call. It never tells you that you're protected. It only shows that a field is being monitored. The decision to stop or resume play always stays with you.

What we watch

What we watch, and why it matters

Lightning

Lightning is the clearest stop-play trigger and the one that punishes delay. Sports Safe tracks strike activity around each field and signals both when to stop and when it's safe to return. Each field has its own clear-the-field radius, 10 miles unless you choose another. A strike inside it clears the field, and the all clear comes only after 30 minutes with no strikes inside it. Whenever storms are possible, Sports Safe watches out to 35 miles, so a storm can often be seen before it reaches you, and recent strikes are plotted on a live map with your radius drawn around the field. You see the storm, not just a warning.

How lightning alerts work

Heat & WBGT

Heat illness is measured by Wet Bulb Globe Temperature, not air temperature or heat index alone. We compute WBGT for each location and check it against your state's heat chart where Sports Safe has one, usually your state athletic association's own policy. A few states share another state's chart. This means the work-to-rest guidance follows a state chart, not a national average. Each field can also be calibrated: automatically, by hand, or on the Organization plan from your own logged meter readings. Calibration only ever makes a reading more cautious, never less.

How heat guidance worksSee heat charts by state

UV Index

Long practices and all-day tournaments add up. We report UV on the WHO standard scale so staff can manage sun exposure for young athletes across a full day outdoors.

More on UV

Severe Weather

Beyond the hazards we compute ourselves, important official NWS alerts for your field's location are delivered straight through. This includes tornado, severe thunderstorm, flood, and more. Full alert details are always one step away.

More on severe weather

Our sources

Where the readings come from

A call to clear the field is only as good as the data behind it. Here is exactly what Sports Safe uses.

Lightning

Xweather, from Vaisala's lightning detection network

Individual strike records with their exact positions, so each field gets its own distance to the nearest strike.

Heat (WBGT)

Live conditions from Apple Weather

Sports Safe computes WBGT for each field from temperature, humidity, wind, and sun, and can calibrate it against the National Weather Service's WBGT forecast, only ever toward caution.

UV index

Apple Weather, on the WHO scale

Current UV and an hourly forecast for each field.

Severe weather

National Weather Service

Important official watches and warnings for each field's location. No alert preference can turn them off.

Radar

NWS NEXRAD, via Iowa State University's mesonet

The radar under the strikes on each field's map.

How often each field is checked

  • Lightning is checked about every 5 minutes whenever storms are expected near a field.
  • Once lightning is within 20 miles, that field is checked about every 3 minutes.
  • Heat, UV, and National Weather Service alerts refresh every 10 minutes.

During each field's alert schedule.

Please read: how to use Sports Safe

Sports Safe is a monitoring aid designed to support trained staff. It does not replace official weather warnings, established emergency action plans, or the judgment of the people on site. Weather data can be delayed, incomplete, or wrong. Always follow your local safety authorities and your organization's policies, and when in doubt, stop play. No app can see everything happening at your field. You can.

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