Weekly Weather Report boats and hoes

boats and hoes

Thursday night is almost here ladies and gentlemen and youll have to forgive me for the lateness of this. Ya see this is actually the third time Ive written this. My tablet has just crashed each time (you would've thought I'd have learned to save progress as I go, but evidently not), losing all of my data and work so here we go! Third time's a charm right?! Anywho, Thursday night football is back and with it comes da U who are definitely nope never mind theyre not back. This team is hyped up every preseason only to come back down to the harsh reality that they just arent that great.

sucks to be U

However, it's still a game that brings up many notable memories in the past. It also seems with our offense really steps up to play in these games, against the U (or at least Logan Thomas does) giving us some of our best offensive displays in the last few years. Ive had this game circled since the beginning of the season, as both a fun game and of course the Thursday night atmosphere. Both teams need this game too, as theyre bothsomehow.still in contention for the ACC coastal division. This game also has a place near and dear to my heart as possibly my biggest forecasting blunder of my life. Last year for those of you who may remember I forecasted that there was a snowballs chance in hell wed even get a rain dropsomething along the lines of there is absolutely no way it rains, and I'm 99.99% confident our team will be playing in beautiful football conditions once more but boy was I wrong. I remember sitting in UNC with some friends just eating my words. This was before I learned (and was comfortable with) the joys of offshore winds and breezes stirring up precipitation in the state better known as heavens waiting room. Regardless this years forecast will be much better as Ill be forecasting in my very own backyard.

I have good news and bad news this week so well just go ahead and do it all in chronological order. The good news comes early, with the high pressure system in the Ohio valley supplying us with very little cloud cover, it should actually be a really pretty and sunny day for tailgating. Temperatures look like theyll be in the 50s with some partly cloudy skies, but still a lot of sunshine coming through. The low off the coast has given us some rain and cloud cover the past couple of days but, it should make way for this strong high coming in from the Ohio Valley.

current pressure map

With the good news comes the bad news though which I'm sad to say is much more heavy this week. For the second straight week, mother nature is not smiling on our football team. Although the high pressure system means a nice day during the afternoon, it also is associated with really cold temperatures at night. Due to the lack of cloud cover, a lot of heat will be able to escape the ground leading to temperatures plummeting - they should drop all the way to the mid 30s. this wouldnt be too bad if it werent for that Blacksburg wind. Due to the steep pressure gradient between our high and the low over Maine, wind speeds will increase dramatically. (pressure gradients increase wind speeds) thus during the day, Id expect gusts to be around 20 MPH, dropping down to a still pretty modest 15 at night. The wind chill for a 35 degree day with 15 MPH gusts, is around 29 degrees Fahrenheit so make sure you bundle up and wear lots of layers, it's gonna be cold! Now this is good news is that Miami is not used to that kind of weather, we have all night to work up a beer blanket, and it really helps the defense (although hitting guys all game could be kind of rough on players' bodies in the cold). However, due to our lack of running game Im not crazy over our chances to move the ball on offense. Ill get into the football talk more later, but first Ill delve into the science chat of the week.

For those who TLDR-ed: wind, cold, wind cold

For the science portion of the week I've been waiting all semester to do a chat on hurricanes, but thanks to El Nino and his damn global impacts, we havent really had anything to look at until last week. This ironically lined up almost perfectly with the Miami Hurricanes coming to town. Much like Miamis football team, the hurricane petered out and completely missed its initial goal of hitting the coast and basically just rained on some cows in Bermuda. It was still a violent storm but nothing compared to what it could have been. I also draw the comparison to the hurricane football season and hurricane season globally, it came in with a little hype and was quickly and brutally shot down due to unforeseen circumstances (QB injuries and El Nino). While were on the topic lets delve into what makes a hurricane.

Most storms youre probably familiar with travel West to East, but hurricanes travel strictly West. This is due to the Coriolis force which I covered last year. The Coriolis force produces wind belts around the earth, near the equator these head west. This means tons of warm dry air off the coast of Africa flows into the atlantic and starts picking up some moisture. As it begins picking up moisture these HUGE clouds begin developing due to the lack of vertical wind shear. Typically in storms you want wind shear to prevent rain from cooling down the warm air beneath the storm, thus cutting off the rising air called the updraft. This would dissipate the storm and kill it. However with hurricanes, because youre near the equators and tropics, your air is warm and moisture is everywhere. This allows these massive clouds to develop with tons of potential energy. As this system continues to strengthen by bringing in more and more moisture via winds from surrounding high pressure systems it continues to strengthen and spin. Essentially this entire system becomes its very own super strong low pressure system. Once it strengthens enough the winds in the middle of the system begin to actually become such a low pressure system that winds from the top of the storm blow downward creating a sort of high pressure system and a clear middle. This is the eye of the storm. Surrounding the eye are the strongest winds, and the more clear and defined the eye becomes the stronger the storm actually is. These things can become ridiculously powerful, with category five storms reaching 50000-60000 feet into the air, and sustained winds over 190 miles per hour, and a storm surge of 19 feet!!!! (storm surge is actually the highest death toll weather phenomena in the worldso yeah take that fact)

During the 70s the government actually came up with an idea to try to seed clouds in the eye to break up the organization of the storm thus weakening the stormsound idea right? Well mother nature pimp smacked us right back into our place, little did they know at the time that this is actually a process of super strong storms to actually reorganize and become even more powerful. In really strong storms there are actually bands of storms that form within the eyewall forming a second and on REALLY rare occasions a third eyewall. Those storms and outer eyewall actually consume and overcome the inner eyewall and reorganize the storm and strengthen it. How do these form? Well like a lot of weather sciencewere not entirely sure. So moral of the story is, let mother nature do her thing.

Regardless hurricanes have given the Hokies some very memorable games

hurricane Isabelle

Memorable moments

I could watch that ALL DAY

And insane fan moments

I expect us to be this loud tomorrow!!!!

hurricanes are pretty epic, and if Miami had a mascot as cool as this I might hate them slightly less

nah id still hate them!

Regardless how do you think this will play out on the field? This cold weather and the wind will definitely hurt the offense a lot more than the defense. While it might be harder to tackle later in the game, catching the ball and let alone throwing the ball will be hard as hell in this rain and wind. I expect both passing attacks to struggle, so I think a lot of this game depends on how healthy Marshawn Williams is, and how well the new look offensive line can block (commmmmmon wyatt teller!). if they can open up some lanes I like our chances, however if it struggles again it might be a long night. Shutting down Duke Johnson will be crucial but I'm confident in bud and his boys to get the job done, this will be a typical lunchpail kinda game.

Final predictions (no mas score predictions)
High 55
Low 35
kickoff wind 12 MPH gusts
precip - nadda
clear skies

GO HOKIES!!!!!

ALSO the physics-astro nerd of myself just remembered that there's an eclipse on Thursday at 6! With the clear skies, it should be pretty visible so keep your eyes peeled!