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Wake Forest Forecast:                                                                                        

“We’ll be OK, all we have to do is pretend we’re Navy”

                                                                        -Bob W.

THE INTRO: 

I know this isn’t the place for it, but I am so excited by the Clemson win that I can hardly contain myself.  You really can’t put in to words what this means for the season.  There are still plenty of games to be played, but you have to think we are now the lead dog in the Atlantic Division.  Which brings us back to the Wake game, if we are the lead dog, then Wake is next in line.  They won their crucial match up with Florida State which puts them on the same track as we are, but the advantage we have over the Deacons is that their road to the Conference Championship runs through College Park.   

So let’s look a head for a little bit.  Next weekend we go to Charlottesville to take on the Wahoo’s who just got DESTROYED by Duke.  I hate to do it, and if things turn out bad you can blame me, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say we win next weekend.  That puts us at 2-0.  Wake on the other hand is playing Clemson, and Wake Forest could very well lose that game, but that doesn’t really help us.  That would put Wake with 1 conference loss, but if they beat us, then we’d also have one conference loss, but we would not hold the tie breaker and would need Wake to lose again at some point.  Sure it’s possible, but not certain.   And it totally takes our fate out of our own hands which is never a good thing. 

Also, another great thing about the Clemson win is that it all but assures us of a Bowl game.  All we have to do is come up with 2 more wins.  And again assuming we beat UVA, that means we would be playing Wake Forest to become bowl eligible.  Now after talking all about winning the Division above, it seems odd to lower the bar by discussing bowl eligibility, but you have to remember, I much like everyone else, lived through the Duffner and Vandy era’s.  When things have been that bad for so long, you can’t help but appreciate the simple accomplishment of just making a bowl, and because of 1985-2001 I don’t take bowl eligibility for granted.  But even without going back that far in history just think of how we have sweated out the post season the last few years.  Wouldn’t it be great to have that all wrapped up before the pumpkin carving tailgate?

There is just so much on the line here that I would be hard pressed to not consider this our game of the year, and though I’d like to pronounce it as such, the truth of the matter is that things change much too quickly in College Football to assume that this is the most important game on our schedule.  I can say however, that this is a HUGE game, and any game of this magnitude should…no, no……MUST be proceeded by an even bigger tailgate.  It also better not be a noon start.  Not that I haven’t learned to love the 6:00 AM tailgate, but because of what happened in Clemson.  Of course the UGA-BAMA game doesn’t exactly prove my prime time theory correct.

But anyway, let’s get on to the weather.

THE HISTORY:

There is no doubt about it now, we are in the heart of fall.  Every day I wake up it’s darker and darker, and every time I walk out the door for work there seems to be just a tad more chill in the air.  It won’t be long until we have nice hard frost (and when we do I’m going to go out to my pumpkin patch with a flashlight and watch all of those SOB squash bugs die a slow death, God I hate them!!).  Anyway, lets take a look at the history so we know what to roughly look for weather wise.  The average high in College Park, MD on October 18^th is 66F and the average low is 45F.  The record high for this date is 82F and the record low is 30F.  Of course I’m working on this in the car without internet access so I don’t have those dates in front of me, but we’ll put them somewhere between 1885-2007.  We don’t have a game time yet, so I don’t know if we should be more worried about the low or the high, but I am hoping with the magnitude of this match that we get at least a 3:30 start or later. 

THE FORECAST:

I’m a little torn on this one.  I love tending towards the drier forecast overall since it seems in general we have a lot more days without rain than we do with, and I especially like to subscribe to that theory in October.  The Farmers Almanac backs my gut up with it’s prediction of warm and sunny, but my long range precipitation planner is saying that October 18^th is the 2^nd most likely day in the month of October for precipitation to fall (the 20^th would be the first).  I think I am going to go with the Farmers Almanac just because, we’ll it has been pretty good to me over the years, and I can’t just leave it on the sidelines when some new and flashy software comes along.  So I’m rewarding the Almanac’s loyalty and siding with the good farmers.  It also doesn’t hurt that the Almanac is forecasting a much better day.

The forecast for the “Shake the Forest” Game is calling for warm and sunny conditions.  The high should be pleasant just barely reaching into the low 70’s.  We’ll go with 71F and the low should be in the low 50’s, I’ll say 51F.  At this time of year this is about as good as you can do.  The skies should be mostly clear with maybe a few high clouds, but there shouldn’t be any chance of rain.  Since it is fall though I think we will have a stiff breeze blowing about with gusts in the 10-15 mph range.  Overall it will be a rather nice day.  So to recap, High 71F Low 51, no rain and moderate breeze. 

I am going to issue a Code Yellow Breeze alert, which just means that once you have  flipped your cup over, just keep an eye on it so it doesn’t blow away. 

The sunrise for this game is scheduled for 7:20 AM and the sun set is for 6:24 PM.  So we have almost reached that point in the season where any game that doesn’t start at noon will have some portions of it played under the lights.  God I love that time of year!  It reminds me of the last time I went to Vegas and I woke up in time to see the end of the Ga Tech-MD game only to my surprise see that it was already night time on the east coast. 

As for the moon it should be doing it’s reverse thing, it will set at noon exactly, and then reappear at 9:09 PM.  The moon will be just about full, we’ll say a waning gibbous with 95% illumination.  I guess this would also be the Harvest Moon!

THE HURRICANE REPORT:

I don’t think we will have any problems with Hurricanes for this one.  Though October is still a pretty active month, I just have a hard time predicting Hurricanes when the weather is so cool out.

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THE SNOW REPORT:

The record low on this date is 30F so the chance of snow does indeed exist, but according to my sources it has NEVER snowed in College Park on October 18^th, and considering most of those records were before global warming, I’m going to feel safe saying it won’t snow this October 18^th either. 

THE X-FACTOR: 

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

• 1959 - Three tornadoes spawned by the remnants of Hurricane Gracie killed 12 persons at Ivy VA. (The Weather Channel)
• 1970 - A nineteen month drought in southern California came to a climax. The drought, which made brush and buildings tinder dry, set up the worst fire conditions in California history as hot Santa Anna winds sent the temperature soaring to 105 degrees at Los Angeles, and to 97 degrees at San Diego. During that last week of September whole communities of interior San Diego County were consumed by fire. Half a million acres were burned, and the fires caused fifty million dollars damage. (David Ludlum)
• 1977 - The temperature at Wichita Falls, TX, soared to 108 degrees to establish a record for September. (The Weather Channel)
• 1986 - Thunderstorms, which had inundated northern sections of Oklahoma with heavy rain, temporarily shifted southward producing 4 to 8 inches rains from Shawnee to Stilwell. Baseball size hail and 80 mph winds ripped through parts of southeast Oklahoma City, and thunderstorm winds caused more than half a million dollars damage at Shawnee. (Storm Data)
• 1987 - Afternoon thunderstorms in Michigan produced hail an inch in diameter at Pinckney, and wind gusts to 68 mph at Wyandotte. A thunderstorm in northern Indiana produced wet snow at South Bend. Seven cities in the northwestern U.S. reported record high temperatures for the date, including readings of 98 degrees at Medford OR and 101 degrees at downtown Sacramento CA. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
• 1988 - Unseasonably warm weather prevailed over Florida, and in the western U.S. The afternoon high of 94 degrees at Fort Myers FL was their tenth record high for the month. Highs of 98 degrees at Medford OR and 99 degrees at Fresno CA were records for the date, and the temperature at Borrego Springs CA soared to 108 degrees. (The National Weather Summary)
• 1989 - Thirteen cities reported record high temperatures for the date, as readings soared into the upper 80s and 90s from the Northern and Central High Plains Region to Minnesota. Bismarck ND reported a record high of 95 degrees, and the temperature reached 97 degrees at Broadus MT. Afternoon thunderstorms developing along a cold front produced wind gusts to 60 mph at Wendover UT. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)

***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.