MSU Baseball Forecast: Tigers up North edition
After an amazing weekend weather wise and a close to freezing match up on Tuesday, it seems that Mother Nature decided to flip the switch on us one more time. When we head up to Columbia, MO this weekend to face off against the Tigers of Mizzou, you would expect colder temperatures with the higher latitude. But I just don’t see it going that way this weekend. The orientation of the stadium is similar to Dudy Noble Field so the players shouldn’t have any new problems concerning the sun during the game. If the wind is blowing from the North (from LF towards Home Plate) then there is nothing obstructing it for 183 yards. That’s a lot of room for the wind to get really howling. But enough about my analysis of the stadium, let’s get right to the forecast. Once again, we will be using the GFS since we’re having to go four days out and the NAM doesn’t quite reach that far.
250 mb
I’m starting off all of my analysis around 12Z Friday which will be fairly early, but that’s beside the point right now as we are just looking at the synoptic scale setup for the games. We have fairly significant jet streak moving off from well past our West so we shouldn’t be affected at all from this jet streak. As we look throughout the rest of the period, it seems that both of the major jet streams (Polar and Sub-tropical) are staying in their respective zones and aren’t venturing towards each other. This means good news for Mizzou vs. Mississippi State baseball probabilities.
500 mb
At 500 mb as we look at relative vorticity values to see if we will receive any DPVA, it starts off fairly tame as we stay steady and don’t have any approaching vort maxes. But this all changes Saturday night going into Sunday morning as we see a nice line of vorticity moving its way steadily towards Columbia. Luckily for us, the vorticity does decrease before it starts affecting us with some DPVA. This will keep the intensity of the uplift down a good bit rather than if we got the full brunt of the vorticity advection. Sunday looks like our best chance for cloud cover and, dare I say it, rain. But let’s hold off on that until after we do a full analysis, shall we?
700 mb
UVVs are fairly unimpressive all around. There is pretty much nothing in the way of upward motion shown by the 700 mb level which could spell good news. It does seem, however, that we could have a beautiful setup for Friday and Saturday. The only real question mark as far as clouds and rain are concerned is Sunday afternoon. That’s where the synoptic-scale setup is slightly more iffy as far as clouds and rain are concerned.
850 mb
We do have Warm Air Advection making its presence known at the 850 mb level which will prevent much uplift happening in the mid to upper layers of the atmosphere. This is because the atmosphere will be warming than the proverbial “parcel” that would be lifted from the surface or otherwise. This means that the parcel would sink and go back to the level where the temperature outside the parcel equals the temperature inside the parcel. Just a little weather fact for you to chew on for a bit.
BUFKIT Analysis
So for this new section I decided to pull up a program called BUFKIT which lets me visualize model data. So I’m still using the GFS but instead of viewing the whole map itself, I’m just looking at one specific location and I’m able to get a full range of GFS model data in one place. For those of you curious of what I’m talking about or if you’re a weather nerd wondering how you can get BUFKIT, it can be found here. For those of you who just want to get on with the forecast, I hear you loud and clear. For the Friday match up at 6:00 PM CDT, winds look to be out of the ESE (blowing in from RF) at 5-10 mph. Saturday with a 2:00 PM CDT first pitch, winds look to be out of the South at 10-15 mph. Sunday is similar but a little more toned down around 1:00 PM CDT, winds from the S at around 10 mph, maybe dropping a few mph as the game progresses. So Saturday and Sunday the winds will be favorable for dingers to be hit out to LF and leave the yard.
Numbers you want to know
Friday
First pitch (6:00 PM CDT): 66 degrees, partly cloudy, winds from the ESE at 5-10 mph, chance of rain 0%.
Last out (9:00 PM CDT): 59 degrees, partly cloudy, winds from the SE at around 5 mph, chance of rain 0%.
Saturday
First pitch (2:00 PM CDT): 73 degrees, mostly sunny, winds from the S at 10-15 mph, chance of rain 0%.
Last out (5:00 PM CDT): 72 degrees, mostly sunny, winds from the S at 10-15 mph, chance of rain 0%.
Sunday
First pitch (1:00 PM CDT): 68 degrees, increasing clouds, winds from the S at 10-15 mph, chance of rain 10%.
Last out (4:00 PM CDT): 69 degrees, increasing clouds, winds from the S around 10 mph, chance of rain 10%.