You think you've enjoyed the summerlike weather this week? Probably not as much as the leaders of Ohio's outdoor attractions.
With memories of last year's cool, overcast summer still fresh, people like John Gannon, general manager of Zoombezi Bay, are gearing up for what they hope will be a sunny and profitable summer.
Water parks are foremost among the outdoor attractions that live or die by the weather forecast. So influential is the forecast, Gannon said, that it's a better determinant of how many people will visit than the actual weather.
"If the forecast is 78 and sunny, not as many people will come out. People like to see that '8,' " he said, as in 80 degrees or better. "People believe the forecast more than their own eyes," he said, adding that they've joked about sponsoring local forecasts and trying to influence them by a degree or two.
If forecasts hold true over the weekend, "this will be better than any seven-day stretch we had all last summer," said Gannon, who also oversees revenue and operations for the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, which like the water park is located in the Powell area.
Gannon practically shudders when he talks about last July, which was particularly unkind to his business.
"The four Saturdays in July last year were all cool and overcast or rainy," he said. "The warmest Saturday, which was July 4, was 73 degrees."
Zoombezi Bay normally opens at 10:30 a.m. At 11 each morning, Gannon holds a meeting to evaluate staffing for the day - which again is influenced by the weather.
"We can normally predict within a couple hundred people how many people we'll get by the end of the day," he said. "Because we work with a lot of young people, there are always volunteers to go home early. If we see it's going to be a great day, we have phone lists of people to call to come in."
Hot and sunny days can bring 8,000 people or more to the park; a cooler or overcast day can mean a fraction of that.
Next door at the zoo, key leaders meet every Tuesday morning to plan for the coming week, and weather is just one of several factors to be considered.
"We base our attendance projections on a lot of history: when holidays fall, when schools are out or in," said Dale Schmidt, executive director of the Columbus Zoo. "By October or November, our predictions are finalized for the next summer, and we're normally within a 5 to 7 percent accuracy range. But weather is the big variable that you can't know in advance. It's an add-in or subtract-out factor in our attendance."
Schmidt, who worked for years in the coastal states of Florida and Oregon before coming to Columbus, has his own theory about the outlook for this summer's weather: It should be a great summer because of the El Nino effect.
Areas bordering the ocean often dread El Nino, a seasonal weather phenomenon that's credited with bringing severe storms in the years it appears. But in the Midwest, Schmidt said, an El Nino summer tends to bring with it warm but mild weather, perfect for people to explore the zoo.
Regardless, the zoo is likely headed toward its fifth year in a row of record-setting attendance, meaning visitors could top 2 million for the first time. Marketing director Pete Fingerhut said early this week that the zoo was already more than 100,000 visitors ahead of projections and expects the new $20 million Polar Frontier exhibit to drive big crowds this summer.
Other outdoor attractions in Ohio say they're not quite as weather-dependent since they're regional destinations and sell many of their tickets in advance to groups. Kings Island spokesman Don Helbig said weather mostly affects whether people go to Boomerang Bay, the water park within the Cincinnati-area amusement park.
"You pretty much know what you'll get in southern Ohio in the summer. Weather doesn't typically affect our staffing, because we only close if there's severe weather," Helbig said. Where theme parks may take a hit, he said, is from season-ticket holders who live close by who may decide against visiting - and buying snacks and souvenirs - if the forecast calls for rain.
Some attractions actually encourage people to go play in the rain.
Julieann Eckel, co-owner of Hocking Hills Canopy Tours, said the company's zip-line tours - which take participants on a high-speed pulley-and-cable trip among the treetops - operate rain or shine. They'll suspend operations when there is lightning or "torrential" rain.
"We get a lot of people when it's sprinkling outside saying they want to cancel," Eckel said. "I tell them, 'Remember when you were 5 years old and the best thing in the world was going out to play in the rain?' I say, 'We're not canceling the tour, you can either come or not.'
"People say, 'This is going to suck, I can't believe I'm going out in the rain.' But most of them end up having a blast. A little rain makes you go faster on the lines, too."
Gannon, meanwhile, admits he'll remain obsessed with warm, sunny days until Labor Day, when Zoombezi Bay closes.
"My wife is just really sick of me watching the Weather Channel. My TV is set to come on to it," Gannon said. "People ask me how I am, and I'll talk for 10 minutes about the weather. I have to be reminded that it's really just a rhetorical question."
mrose@dispatch.com
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