SEC Baseball Tournament Forecast Series: Game 2
Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports
Man…what a night of baseball! Walk-off fashion in the bottom of the 10th to beat the University of Georgia Bulldogs and advance to the double-elimination rounds of the 2014 SEC Baseball Tournament. We will face off against the University of South Carolina Gamecocks for a first pitch time of TBD. For the purposes of this forecast, we will use the same first pitch time as Tuesday’s 8:20 PM CDT game. It will be the same format as always and we will be using the 0Z NAM from the College of DuPage website. So here we go!
250 mb
Another boring day in the upper-levels as an upper-level high-pressure is centered over the Arkansas/Oklahoma area. This will continue to drive our weather down here in the Southeast for quite some time and keep the moisture content fairly low. The setup looks pretty similar to the one we had today, but let’s keep looking.
500 mb
Moving on down to the relative vorticity values, call me hard to please but it’s setting up to be another boring day weather-wise for tomorrow’s game. This is good news for us Bulldogs wanting to see our boys play in the Second Round of the SEC Baseball Tournament. But for a Meteorologist, this is boring and dull. Not the most exciting thing in the world, but that’s part of life. No real DPVA to speak of, and a fairly significant amount of NVA creeping its way across Alabama and Mississippi as the day rolls on. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a cloudless sky yet again.
700 mb
Now this is surprising. There seems to be a little bit of upward motion that makes its way to the Hoover area around 0Z, or 7:00 PM CDT, and just hovers there for a bit. Now I’m not saying that this could drive us to have cloud cover during the game, but the likelihood of seeing a few scattered clouds does increase with this upward motion. Of course, that all depends on the amount of moisture coming in from the Gulf and other factors, but this is definitely something to look at. But I wouldn’t be too concerned about this at all.
850 mb
Looking at 850 mb temperatures for warm-air advection, it does seem like we do get a small bit of WAA around that magical 7:00 PM CDT mark on Wednesday. This most likely explains the uplift that we saw on the previous map. Winds aren’t too terribly strong, only 20 knots, from the West so I’m not too concerned about any shear happening aloft. Relative humidity values stay weak throughout the evening, which will probably suppress any sort of heavy cloud cover. This most likely will inhibit cloud formation completely.
Surface Analysis
Looking at surface temperature values, looks like we will peak out about 86 degrees before the game but will decrease into the upper 70’s by first pitch. Due to very little cloud cover, however, the temperatures should decrease dramatically as the game progresses. Dewpoints will hover in the low to mid 60’s before the game and we will start off a little muggy, and will stay about that muggy throughout the game. Winds will be weak once again in Hoover, which should inhibit balls from leaving the yard for all of tomorrow’s games.
Numbers you want to know
First pitch (Officially 30 minutes after earlier game, estimated 8:20 PM CDT): 75 degrees, clear, winds SW at 5-10 mph.
Last out (11:20 PM CDT): 64 degrees, clear, winds SW below 5 mph.