Home / Blog / Rain days in lawn care: a sample policy, the texts to send, and a 6 p.m. forecast check
Rain days in lawn care: a sample policy, the texts to send, and a 6 p.m. forecast check
A sample rain-day policy for lawn care companies, the customer and owner texts that go with it, and how a free National Weather Service forecast check can decide or ask at 6 p.m. the night before.
Nobody searches for "lawn care rain delay" (Google offered zero suggestions when we checked on October 31, 2026), but every lawn care owner knows the morning: rain on the windshield, a full route, and a phone that's about to ring. LawnSite has whole threads on it, like How do you deal with rescheduling jobs and Rescheduling & texting customers.
The trade advice is consistent. Total Landscape Care's rainy-day guide: "The key is to not leave your clients in the dark," and "As soon as you know that weather conditions will keep you from working that day, send an email or text message to tell the client you're rescheduling" (Total Landscape Care). Jobber's own guide recommends a written rain policy and one message to every client booked that day (Jobber Academy; Jobber sells software, so read it as advice, not data).
This post has three parts: a policy you can adapt, the messages, and how our rain-day reschedule recipe automates the 6 p.m. decision. We tested the recipe against mocks of Jobber, Twilio and the weather service, not live accounts.
Step 1: write the policy down
Put this in your service agreement and the "what to expect" email new customers get (our estimate follow-up recipe sends one when a quote is approved):
Rain days. We don't mow when it's too wet. If rain is in the forecast for your service day, we'll text or email you the evening before (or that morning) and move your visit to the next work day. You don't need to do anything. If the new day doesn't work, just reply. Sundays are not work days, so a Saturday rain day moves to Monday.
Change the days to match your week. Keep it short enough to fit in one text when someone asks.
Step 2: the messages
To each customer booked tomorrow (exact text from our test run, invented customer):
Hi Dana, rain in the forecast for Wed Apr 14, so we're moving your weekly mowing to Thu Apr 15. No need to do anything. Reply if that day doesn't work. Reply STOP to opt out. - Prairie Edge Lawn Co.
To the owner, on a borderline forecast:
Rain check for [day]: 55% chance (...). Text RAIN TOMORROW to move tomorrow's route and tell customers, or ignore this to keep the route.
To the office: the list of moved visits in route order, with who still needs a phone call (customers with no textable phone or email). Customer replies are forwarded to the office as they come in.
Step 3: let the forecast decide (or ask)
The National Weather Service API is free and needs no key, only a User-Agent that identifies your app and a contact (NWS API docs). At 6 p.m. on work days, the recipe reads tomorrow's chance of rain for one point (your shop, or the middle of your route) and does one of three things:
| Tomorrow's chance of rain | What happens |
|---|---|
| 70% or more (you set it) | Customers booked tomorrow are told their visit moves to the next work day; the office gets the list |
| 40% to 69% (you set it) | Only the owner gets a text; nothing happens unless they reply RAIN TOMORROW |
| Under 40% | Nothing |
| Forecast can't be read | Owner and office are told nothing was sent; they decide by hand |
The owner can also text RAIN TODAY in the morning when it's raining and the forecast was wrong. The recipe reads tomorrow's visits from Jobber but doesn't move them; your office reschedules in Jobber from the list. One forecast point covers your whole route, which is why borderline days go to the owner instead of guessing.
Texts follow the same rules as the rest of the lawn care recipes: recorded consent, 8 a.m.-9 p.m. in the customer's time zone (47 CFR 64.1200), and one shared STOP list. Customers who opted out of texts get an email instead. More in our texting consent guide. We're not lawyers.
What our mock test showed
20 of 20 scenarios passed in our mock run on October 31, 2026 (see the recipe page and how we test):
- L2-01: at 6 p.m. Tuesday with 80% rain for Wednesday, customers were told their visit moves to Thursday, and the office got the list in route order.
- L2-03: at 55%, only the owner got a text; no customer heard anything.
- L2-07 / L2-07b: the owner texted RAIN at 6:30 a.m.; emails went right away, texts were held for quiet hours, and a customer in western Kansas (Mountain time) was still held at 8:30 a.m. Central and got the text at the 9:30 a.m. run.
- L2-09: rain on a Saturday moved the visit to Monday, skipping Sunday.
- L2-10: with the weather service returning an error, no customer got anything and the owner and office were told to decide by hand.
- L2-14: a customer texting RAIN didn't trigger a rain day; only the owner's number can.
Mock tests use a local fake of Jobber, Twilio, the NWS API and the email API with invented customers. Watch it for a couple of weeks in the spring before letting it run on its own.
Related
- Rain days push invoices back too; the invoice reminder ladder counts from the due date, and our post on lawn care invoice reminders explains how.
- New customers should hear the rain policy before their first visit: lawn care estimate follow-up.
- Spring is also renewal season: spring renewal by link.
- Rain also slows quoting; new web leads still get a same-minute answer from the quote request instant reply.
- Want the whole set? See every lawn care recipe or browse all recipes.
Found an error or a better source? Corrections policy. More articles on the blog.