Weather claims are won in the daily log
Every superintendent knows a rain-out when he sees one. The owner doesn't — not a year later, when the project finishes 19 days late and liquidated damages are on the table. At that point the question isn't whether it rained. It's whether you can prove that weather stopped critical-path work on specific days, that those days exceeded what the contract already allowed for, and that you gave notice on time. A construction weather delay log kept every workday is how you prove it.
The free Excel template above has a daily Weather Log that decides whether each day counts as a weather day, and a Monthly Summary that compares actual weather days with your contract's anticipated adverse weather days and calculates the excess.
What to log every day
| Column | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Date / Day | Every scheduled workday — good days too. The day of the week fills in. |
| AM / PM Conditions | Dropdown: clear, partly cloudy, overcast, fog, light rain, heavy rain, thunderstorms, snow, sleet/ice, high wind, extreme heat, extreme cold. Morning and afternoon matter — a storm at 11 AM is a partial day. |
| High / Low °F, Precip (in), Wind (mph) | From a site gauge or the nearest NOAA station. Write wind as a number, not "windy." |
| Ground Conditions | Dry/firm, damp, wet/soft, muddy, standing water, frozen, snow covered. This is how you document the day-after-rain. |
| Work Planned | What the schedule called for that day — the activity, not just "sitework." |
| Critical Path Work? (Y/N) | Was the planned work on the critical path? This is the column that decides most claims. |
| Work Impacted | None, Partial, or Full Day. |
| Crew Sent Home / Hours Lost | Headcount sent home and hours of critical work lost. |
| Notice Sent (Y/N) / Notice Ref | Letter or email number and date. Turns red when an impacted day has no notice. |
| Weather Day | Calculates: 1 when critical work was affected and the day was lost or hours lost met your threshold; otherwise 0. |
How anticipated adverse weather days work
Federal construction specifications — the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is the best-known example — commonly include a table of monthly anticipated adverse weather delay work days, usually derived from NOAA 10-year or longer averages for the project location. Something like: January 6 days, February 5, March 5, April 4, and so on. Those days are part of the contract time. Your baseline schedule is expected to carry them, and you get no extension for them.
The contractor records actual adverse weather days as they happen. When a month's actual weather days exceed that month's anticipated number, the difference — the excess weather days — is what supports a time extension. The template's Monthly Summary does exactly this for twelve months:
- Anticipated Adverse Weather Days — typed in from your contract (the example values are placeholders).
- Actual Weather Days — summed from the daily log for that month.
- Excess Weather Days = MAX(0, actual − anticipated).
- Cumulative Excess — the running total you'd request as a time extension.
- Impacted Days w/o Notice — the notice gaps to fix before you submit anything.
Two things to check in your own contract: whether days are counted as work days or calendar days (converting between them changes the number), and whether unused anticipated days in a dry month carry over to a wet one. The typical federal approach is month-by-month with no carry-over, which is how the template calculates it.
When the contract has no weather table
Most private contracts don't include anticipated weather days. Under AIA A201-2017 §15.1.6.2 (verify against the edition and modifications in your contract), a claim for additional time based on weather has to be documented with data showing the weather was abnormal for the period, couldn't reasonably have been anticipated, and had an adverse effect on the scheduled work. In practice that means comparing your log to NOAA's 30-year Climate Normals: if normal March rainfall at the nearest station is 3.4 inches with about 7 days of 0.10 inch or more, and you logged 5.0 inches and 11 such days, you have the start of an "abnormal" argument. Many contractors build their own anticipated-days baseline from NOAA normals at bid time and put it in their proposal's clarifications — then the Monthly Summary works the same way.
NOAA data: your third-party backup
Your log is your record. NOAA data is the independent evidence the owner can't argue with.
- Go to NOAA NCEI Climate Data Online (ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web) and search Daily Summaries by ZIP code or city.
- Pick the nearest station with a complete record, at a similar elevation and not across a ridge or a large body of water. Record its ID and distance in the log header.
- Pull PRCP (precipitation), TMAX/TMIN, SNOW, and AWND/WSF2 (wind) for every day you claim — and for the whole month, so you can show the pattern.
- For timing, use Local Climatological Data (hourly, mostly airport stations). An inch of rain at 2 AM and an inch between 7 AM and 3 PM are different claims.
- For arbitration or litigation, order certified data from NCEI early.
A cheap rain gauge on the trailer, read at the same time each morning, fills the gap when the nearest station is miles away. Note both readings in the log.
Field tips from the trailer
- Log the day after. Clear skies over a flooded excavation is still a lost day for critical sitework. Record the ground condition and what the crew did instead.
- Put numbers on wind. Note the limit you were working to — crane manufacturer's wind limit, aerial lift rating, the erector's procedure. See our crane clearance chart for other crane limits supers track.
- Heat and cold are spec limits. Concrete placement temperatures, coating application limits and heat-illness procedures that stopped work are documented reasons, not preferences.
- Show mitigation. Dewatering, cleanup, moving crews to non-critical work — owners and courts look for it.
- Send notice every time. Even when you're not sure the day will count. Notice deadlines (often 7–21 days; A201 uses 21) are the most common reason weather claims fail.
- Share it weekly. A log the owner's rep saw every Friday is hard to dispute at the end of the job.
- Photograph it. Standing water and mud photos, tied by date to the log, do more in a meeting than numbers. Use the progress photo log.
Common weather-claim mistakes
- Only logging bad days. A log with 9 entries looks like it was written for the claim. A log with every workday looks like a record.
- Claiming non-critical days. Rain that stopped the landscaping crew while the critical path was inside the building doesn't earn time. The template zeros those days out.
- No baseline. Without the contract's anticipated days (or NOAA normals), "it rained a lot" is an opinion.
- Late or missing notice. Covered above. It's worth repeating.
- A schedule that doesn't show the weather allowance. If the baseline schedule has no weather days, the owner will argue your float absorbed them.
Related templates and tools
- Daily field report template — weather belongs on every daily report
- 3-week look-ahead schedule — plan around the forecast
- Change order template — for the time-extension request itself
- Progress photo log — date-matched weather photos
- Browse all free construction templates
Let the daily report do it
Field PM daily reports capture weather, crew, hours and delays from the field every day, with photos attached, so the record that supports a time extension builds itself instead of being reconstructed at the end of the job. Start a free 30-day trial — no credit card required.
This template is a record-keeping tool, not legal advice. Your contract controls notice, counting and time-extension requirements.
