John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports
Well here we are, the last SEC series of the campaign. This time, the Mississippi State Baseball team heads right down the highway to the University of Alabama for the SEC closer. Now this series does have some implications as far as the SEC tournament is concerned and our seeding. So, like always, weather will play a huge role in the outcome of the series. We do have some weird first pitch times for this series, thank you TV schedules. But anyway, here comes the times: Thursday – 6:35 PM CDT, Friday – 6:05 PM CDT, Saturday – 3:05 PM CDT. We will be using the GFS for this forecast from College of DuPage. So let’s get right to this.
250 mb
Well the upper-levels look pretty great for baseball. By the time we get to first pitch tomorrow, we’ll be having clear skies and shouldn’t have any threat of rain for the whole series, as far as I can tell. The rest of the days look even better as far as major upper-level forcing is concerned. We have a tilted trough that will push its way out by the time we get to Saturday’s match-up. This means that we should have even less upper-level forcing than the previous days. But, as we will see soon, this won’t necessarily mean no cloud cover.
500 mb
So here we are again, looking for the great DPVA…well…maybe not looking for it. We don’t want to see DPVA for baseball. That means that we’re having clouds and maybe storms. So let’s not look for DPVA and say we didn’t. Sound good? Yes? Wonderful. Now Thursday looks like we may just miss out on the DPVA as it pushes through about 3 hours before first pitch. So that’s good news as the air will be less conducive to storms and clouds. The vorticity stays well away from Tuscaloosa for the whole series. So more good news for us!
700 mb
UVVs are the same story. I know this is getting quite repetitive as far as the weather is concerned, but thus is the life of Southeastern weather patterns in the Summer. You should know this by now. But anyway, the UVVs stay fairly neutral and even turn a little negative throughout the period. We like to see that for baseball. No rain, no clouds, just straight sunshine and fun times. So yes, expect great weather for this series.
Surface Analysis
Temperatures a little on the low side for the start of the series. High for Thursday is only 68 with the majority of the cloud cover staying until first pitch. Then the cloud cover should taper off slowly throughout the game. Temperatures will increase each day so don’t expect it to be cold for every game.
Numbers you want to know
Thursday
First pitch (6:35 PM CDT): 65°, overcast, winds NW at 5-10 mph, chance of rain 40%.
Last out (9:35 PM CDT): 57°, decreasing clouds, winds NW below 5 mph.
Friday
First pitch (6:05 PM CDT): 69°, clear, winds NW at 10-15 mph.
Last out (9:05 PM CDT): 58°, clear, winds N below 5 mph.
Saturday
First pitch (3:05 PM CDT): 74°, partly cloudy, winds W at 10-15 mph.
Last out (6:05 PM CDT): 71°, mostly cloudy, winds NW at 10-15 mph, chance of rain 20%.