Weekly Weather Report a new era

Well its that time of the year again! Football season is upon us which means its time for me to brush off the forecasting rust and give you guys a write-up and a short weather lesson week in and week out. What better way to start than by keeping tabs on a freakin hurricane?! I've been keeping an eye on what is now being called tropical depression Hermine for a good time now.

Side note when you google Hermine, our favorite first lady pops up!

...and this thing, i have no idea what the connection is

Originally the storm looked as though it would develop VIOLENTLY in the gulf, with the Euro going out on a limb and saying it would balloon up to a category 4 or 5 and slam into New Orleans much like Katrina....thankfully that didn't happen and I didnt jump the gun on the forecast. The wind shear in the gulf is just to high to get it to anything to bad at the moment. However its still a very dangerous system that's looking like its going to drop a lot of rainfall not just on Florida but along the entire east coast at the moment.

THATS A REEEEEEALLY CLOSE CALL

The track the storm is currently on has it battering the eastern coast of the US including Virginia and barrrely missing Blacksburg, however I do not think this is the case. A few of the models have had it zeroed in to track west for about a day now, and the others are starting to following suite meaning Roanoke/Blacksburg is probably going to get hammered. How hammered is another story however. There are basically two cases I've narrowed it down to based on current observations that will be the difference between "drinking 3 rails in 2 hours hammered" and "spreading 4 rails out over the course of an entire evening hammered" both really suck and will still leave us in a bad place afterwards.

straight delicious liquid poison

First lets discuss the current layout of what could impact these two scenarios. Really the big thing to keep an eye on is a trough currently around the midwest (the northern portion IE Michigan Canada Wisconsin region) as that makes its way across the US one thing to really keep an eye on is how quickly it moves. This is the primary disagreement between a lot of the models right now and could steer the storm further west or east as well as strengthening it (See Superstorm Sandy)

I'm going on a limb here and straying a little bit away from my usual guns. The GFS and Canadian models are drawing on similar conclucsions and seem to be roping the euro in with it. They both have nearly identical upper level trough positioning (as mentioned above). The canadian model is beefing up that trough a little more than the GFS. This basically means that should the system stray west a little bit, then the warm core seclusion will occur in the eastern part of Virginia (basically where the most intense and mature part of the storm is) as it interacts with the trough

an image of warm core seclusion note the warm core in the last image...its the most mature part of the low

The current front is south enough that it could start to interact with the system in the next day or so (leading to a really strong warm core seclusion like what happened with Sandy) or if it heads west, it secludes sooner but also loads more rainfall...

So back to my original analogy... case 3 rails in 2 hours the storm heads west and secludes quickly, leading to a direct hit to the Roanoke area. In case 4 rails over the course of the night, the storm tracks more eastward and secludes later thus leading to a more drawn out event. Regardless, I'm going to disagree with the NWS current forecast, based on current model output data and current conditions. I believe its going to rain A LOT and the NWS will jump on board in the next day or so

So what the hell does this mean for the game? well...on one hand we do have a good history playing in hurricanes

take that a&m

on the other hand we have a brand new head coach whose bringing in a new offense. This game is going to be SLOPPY which means this game is going to be won on the ground. Dont expect a lot of good QB play, and I really hope we get an early lead and can just run our way out of the game. Rainy games like this are a really good way to ruin a players career on a hard cut (see RGIII). As far as advantages go between offense and defense I've always kind of split it into three categories. In light rain i think its a wash between the two units. In moderate rain I think it plays into the offenses hands, receivers can still catch the ball mildly well and defenders have a harder time reacting to the slick ground (slipping more often). In heavy rain the advantage is flipped in the defenses favors, QBs have a difficult time gripping the ball let alone throwing it and receivers will struggle to catch the ball, the offense thus has to become one dimensional playing right into the defenses hands.

Liberty has a rather balanced attack and runs a very similar offense to our own. Hopefully our defense can take advantage of this familiarity and with better athletes should be able to shut them down. While liberty has the same advantage, they dont have quite the same athletes that we do to take advantage. Likewise I think fuente isn't going to take this game lightly as its his first game ever so we wont see any other upsets that shall not be mentioned any further. The only thing that worries me is the fact that they have a duel threat qb and our defenses woes against duel threat guys has been noted previously.

on offense i expect a healthy dosage of running and read optioning and to grind out enough points to win a sloppy weird game.

fond rainy game football memories

Final predictions (yes I'm doing this again)

VT - 27
LU - 10
RAIN - LOTS
WIND - LOTS
CLOUDS - LOTS

Hope I'm wrong about the forecast for everybodys sake and we survive and move on to Bristol

GO HOKIES!!!

PS I havent forgotten about the Madden Julian Oscillation write-up just couldn't fit it in this week

Overall I still expect us to win but I expect this to be sloppier than usual