EDMONTON, AB – It’s a word that racers and fans never want to hear on a race day. That word is rain. When clouds begin to build on a hot Friday, Saturday or Sunday afternoon, often there are more glances skyward than towards race cars in the pits. Over the years the Northern Provincial Pipelines Late Model Series has seen its share of weather woes. Of the 214 scheduled NPP Series race dates since the very first season back in 2001, a total of 51 of those dates have been a ‘complete’ loss due to weather.

“It sure is an eye opening number,” exclaims NPP Series announcer Gord Craig, “this number does not include race events that were delayed or shortened by bad weather either. There has been a few of these over the years that’s for sure.” Looking over an extensive and detailed list of race stats Craig says the month of June has not been kind to the NPP Late Model Series. “The month of June, to put it bluntly, has sucked for us weather wise the past few years. Two seasons ago [2013] we didn’t race a single time in June thanks to five consecutive rainouts. Just last season [2014] we had one race completely wiped out and lost the Feature in another.”

Seeing actual race results for the month of June, without weather implications, are even more grim going back to the 2009 season. “Of the 20 events we scheduled in June [since 2009], we got rained out a total of 12 times.” The next schedule event of the NPP Late Model Series is Saturday, June 27th. “Yes we do need the rain right now. It’s pretty dry in Alberta,” says Craig, “it can rain all it wants three days before and two hours after our race is over. Hopefully that’s not too much to ask.”

NPP SERIES SCHEDULED EVENTS PER MONTH SINCE 2001
MAY – 35 (12) 34.3%
JUNE – 37 (12) 32.4%
JULY – 47 (10) 21.3%
AUGUST – 49 (4) 8.2%
SEPTEMBER – 44 (13) 29.6%
OCTOBER – 2 (0) 0.0%

– number of events completely washed out due to rain/snow is shown in brackets.