NCAA Lafayette Regional Forecast Series: Game 3 vs. Louisiana-Lafayette/Jackson State

Well here we are. One game away from advancing to a Super Regional for the second straight year. We just fit in a window for our game on Saturday, will we be this lucky for Sunday’s 2014 NCAA Lafayette Regional final? Well we will certainly see in the next few moments. But let’s go over a few basics, first. If you’re here and just looking for the pure forecast numbers, scroll on down to the bottom. If you’d like to read the in-depth stuff, the nitty-gritty, whatever you want to call it, then just keep on doing what you’re doing. We will be using the NAM on the College of DuPage site. So let’s get right to it, same format as last time.

500 mb

Looking for vorticity advection, this is the most curious case of the whole Regional period as we will see NVA for the first time. This means that we actually might not be chased off by storms or be stuck right in between two cells. NVA = less uplift = less storms. This all means good news for us, especially as the 6 hours or so beforehand are full of storms. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Loser’s Bracket game get pushed back some due to weather delay.

700 mb

Looking at those pesky upward vertical velocities, or UVVs for short, it looks like beforehand that the motion is in a general upwards direction. But as we move closer to first pitch, the velocities slow and even turn slightly negative. This is exactly what I thought would happen from looking at the 500 mb vorticity map. So this is giving me a little bit more confidence in saying we will have a rain-free Regional final.

850 mb

Looking on down to 850 mb at temperatures, there is no temperature advection that I can see which means that we shouldn’t have any low-level instability changes due to temperatures. Humidity, on the other hand, will be just as high as Saturday night due to a fairly strong Southerly wind coming into Lafayette. This will make the bats slippery, a la Gavin Collins’s accidental bat flip after a K.

BUFKIT analysis

Looking at the NAM by using BUFKIT, it suggests that the rain should fall until between 4:00 PM and 5:00 PM. This means that the previous game, which starts at 1:00 PM CDT, could see some weather delays. For our game, however, the game looks nice and dry.

Numbers you want to know

First pitch (6:00 PM CDT): 77 °F, mostly cloudy, winds SE at 5-10 mph, chance of rain 30%.

Last out (9:00 PM CDT): 75 °F, mostly cloudy, winds SE at 5-10 mph, chance of rain 10%.