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Rutgers Forest Forecast:                                                                                        

“What no Friday Night kickoff for this one, Big East?”

                                                            -Bob W.

THE INTRO: 

I must say this is one of the most difficult forecasts I have had to write to date. Granted it has nothing to do with the weather, just the situation in which I have to write.  I always try to do the forecast at least 2 weeks ahead of time.  After all if I were to do them any earlier, then you could just go to a legitimate weather site and get an actual forecast (where is the fun of that?), but since we are playing this Thursday Night on National TV and I don’t really see myself getting the opportunity to sit down at the computer for the rest of the weekend, I’m going to have to get this forecast up now.  But it is so hard to write about Rutgers with West Virginia on the mind. 

This game will be the Terps second game against 2 of the top 3 Big East powers.  The Scarlet Knights remind me a lot of the 2001-2002 Terps.  They sort of came completely out of nowhere and have had immediate success.  But just like the Terps back then, the initial success wears off, and you need to have some substance underneath.  And I’ll tell you, watching Navy going into Rutgers on Friday night, I thought the Knights were pretty lucky to get a win.  Navy twice turned it over in the endzone and also had a couple of other bad breaks go their way.  If the Terps can play up to the level they are capable of playing, this game definitely looks winnable.  Now don’t get me wrong, we show up like we did for FIU and we will lose, but Friedgen seems to get the boys playing better as the year goes on, and late September is usually when the team starts firing on all cylinders.

And winning this one would be a good thing.  It not only would send a “Shut the Hell Up” to the Big East who won’t play any top tier out of conference games (unlike those Terps who take on all comers!).  It would give us a winning record for the Month of September.  Sure a winning record after 5 games isn’t really shooting for the moon, but considering we play the #3 team in the nation tomorrow, then the Defending ACC Champs on the road, and then top 20 Rutgers on the road, this is quite a stretch we have to go through. Any win we can is going to be one we earned. 

And lastly, you didn’t think I would go this far into a Rutgers Forecast without a Big East rant.  But for those of us who watched the Navy-Rutgers game, the announcers were going on and on about Ray Rice and his bid for the Heisman.  They were talking about all the marketing and campaigning Rutgers was doing for him.  And then the color guy said something that brought the whole situation into perspective, I can’t remember the quote, but it was something along the lines of “All this stuff Rutgers is doing is nice, but the idea of campaigning for an Award really bugs me.  If he is good enough, let him prove it on the field, we don’t need whacky marketing gimmicks”.  And there you have it, that pretty much sums up the Conference that has given us Friday Night College Football, the whole hey look at me inferiority complex.  I’m glad I’m not the only one thinking like this.

Now on to the weather.

THE HISTORY:

All right, a new location for a Terps Football game (God I can’t wait to do the Cal forecast in 2 years!).  For this one the Terps will be traveling up the New Jersey Turnpike to Piscataway.  The average high for Piscataway NJ for September 29^th is 71, and the average low is 55.  Yes, summer is officially over at this point.  The record high for Piscataway is 89 which occurred in 1945, and the record low is 40 which occurred in  1942.  Neither of those records seems appealing to me, so hopefully we won’t threaten either.

THE FORECAST:

For this match up the Farmers Almanac is giving us Fair skies with a chance of rain showers. Based on the way the forecast was written it appears as though those showers will be closer to Sunday than Saturday, so I think we should be all right.  We haven’t really established a trend yet for this fall (really wet, really hot, really cool,..etc.) so I’m going to keep my projections near the averages.  The Alamanc doesn’t really throw any wrenches at us, so we are going to call for a pretty nice day:

The forecast for the September 29 “Terps vs. the New York City Media Whores” is for a great fall day.  We don’t have a kickoff time yet, but knowing the zany Big East it will probably be at 9:00 AM or something so they won’t have to compete with other games for viewers.  If we do kickoff at noon, we are going to have a chilly tailgate.  At least until 11:00 or so.  If we get a night or late afternoon tailgate, we should be sitting pretty.  We should see highs in the low 70’s and a low in the low to mid 50’s.  I’ll put the high at 72 and for a low well say 53.  There should not be any chance or rain, and I think the breeze will be that, just a breeze, we’ll call it 5-10 mph, nothing out of the ordinary.  So to recap, high 72, low 53, no rain, slight breeze.

For this game we don’t really have any codes.  Sun burn shouldn’t be an issue, and there shouldn’t be any rain, we are kind of hitting the heart of Fall, which means with the exception of the FSU game in Tallahassee, we may have seen the end of the Sunscreen warnings. 

The game day sunrise in Piscataway, NJ on September 29^th is for 6:52 am.  Let’s hope we won’t have to worry about it.  The sunset will be around 6:44.  We are not only traveling north for this match-up, but also east, so that is why the sun set time is a half hour earlier than the Wake Forest sunset in Winston Salem the previous week.  The moon looks like it will be close to full, possibly a waning gibbous, but unless you are really looking at it, or an astronomy geek, you’d probably be just fine with the “Full” definition. 

THE HURRICANE REPORT:

I’m feeling pretty good about this, don’t know why, just do.  So I’m going to put the Hurricane Ranking at, hmmm…..we’ll say 5.  (The jinx index however has just been raised to 49!)

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Look here for further updates, as we get closer to game day.

THE CHARITY PLEA:

Not much change here since we still haven’t had a second tailgate yet, though Tailgate #2 is getting close.  But the stats are all the same. We’ve raised $37 dollars and our record from last year was $300.  This will be the last forecast that I have to write $37 dollars for (I think that has been where we’ve been at for the last 3 forecasts).

THE X-FACTOR: 

Just to show you some extremes that could happen and have happened on this particular date in weather history. 

• An outbreak of tornadoes from Oklahoma to Indiana caused 81 deaths and 25 million dollars damage. A tornado (possibly two tornadoes) cut an eight-mile long path across Saint Louis MO, to Granite City IL, killing 79 persons. The damage path at times was a mile and a quarter in width. The storm followed a similar path to tornadoes which struck in 1871, 1896, and 1959. (The Weather Channel)
• 1959 - A storm produced 28 inches of snow at Colorado Springs, CO. (David Ludlum)
• 1983 - Heavy rains began in central and eastern Arizona which culminated in the worst flood in the history of the state. Eight to ten inch rains across the area caused severe flooding in southeastern Arizona which resulted in thirteen deaths and 178 million dollars damage. President Reagan declared eight counties of Arizona to be disaster areas. (The Weather Channel)
• 1986 - A week of violent weather began in Oklahoma which culminated in one of the worst flooding events in the history of the state. On the first day of the week early morning thunderstorms caused more than a million dollars damage in south Oklahoma City. Thunderstorms produced 4 to 7 inches of rain from Hobart to Ponca City, and another round of thunderstorms that evening produced 7 to 10 inches of rain in north central and northeastern sections of Oklahoma. (Storm Data)
• 1987 - A slow moving cold front produced rain from the Great Lakes Region to the Central Gulf Coast Region. A late afternoon thunderstorm produced wind gusts to 62 mph at Buffalo NY. Warm weather continued in the western U.S. In Oregon, the afternoon high of 96 degrees at Medford was a record for the date. (The National Weather Summary)
• 1988 - High pressure brought freezing temperatures to parts of Vermont and New York State. Burlington VT dipped to 30 degrees, and Binghamton NY reported a record low of 34 degrees. The high pressure system also brought cold weather to the Central Rocky Mountain Region. Alamosa CO reported a record low of 18 degrees, and Gunnison CO was the cold spot in the nation with a morning low of just five degrees above zero. (National Weather Summary)
• 1989 - Seven cities reported record high temperatures for the date, as readings soared into the 80s and low 90s in the Northern Plateau and Northern Plains Region. Record highs included 91 degrees at Boise ID, and 92 degrees at Sheridan WY. The high of 100 degrees at Tucson AZ marked their 51st record high of the year, and their 92nd day of 100 degree weather. (National Weather Summary)

***This is a disclaimer to remove all responsibility on myself if this forecast is wrong.  Being that it is very difficult to predict the weather greater than 48 hours in advance, the odds of needing this disclaimer are about 100%.  However I do believe this forecast will be pretty close to what we can actually look to expect.