Rainouts in the Eyes of a Dirt Track Fan

It's simple: as a fan of dirt track racing, there are basically zero reasons why we should be thankful for a total weekend rainout. From the way the season has gone thus far for most of the country, I'd say just about everyone is downright sick of them. The way we look at it, rainouts can be categorized into 4 different levels.

Category 1 - Manageable: Manageable rainouts are when a shower pops up on our favorite local track. The initial thought? "Dang, I really wanted to see racing here tonight." Even though you can't see racing at your home track, you can take a trip down the road and catch some racing at another venue in your area.

Category 2 - Inconvenient: We classify inconvenient rainouts as the flash rains that all tracks in your local area fall victim too. Of course, you can always travel a couple hours either direction to another regional show provided that you're willing to spend the added time and gas. Regardless of how you look at it, Category 2 rainouts are annoying for all those affected by it.

Category 3 - Pain in the Ass: Pain in the ass rainouts, we all experience them at least a few times every season. We see the inevitable rains coming to our region in the days leading up to the weekend. While it's still a shame that we can't spend our Friday/Saturday/Sunday night where we want to be, at the race track of course, at least we never got our hopes up that the races might get in. And hey, at least you can still follow along with races from all over the country using Facebook, Twitter, Race-Monitor, etc.

Category 4 - Detrimental: Detrimental rainouts...where to begin? A detrimental rainout is the worst of them all. When seemingly all races locally, regionally and nationwide get cancelled due to rain. Just like a category 3, fans usually know what the weather will be like in their area before the weekend. So at least we know not to get our hopes up again to see some racing. But we did have our hopes up to follow other prominent events across the country and now that is not going to happen. When we are experiencing a category 4, not even Facebook, Twitter, Race-Monitor or any other media outlet can ease our pain.