Weather for Wagner @ RU: Looking warm (high in the mid/upper 60s) and likely dry, although low chance of a few light showers before noon
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Front row of the yellow lot was damp and a little squishy in spots, but very manageable. We had some hay to spread around, so no issues in the tent areas. The rain was brief and of no bother. Temps were great. All in all, a good day.
Ignoring the somewhat silly "warm/not warm" and "forecast confidence" tangents, I think it's worth noting how good the NWS forecast was for Saturday. Even 6 days out they noted that there was a chance of rain on Friday lingering into Saturday and the message didn't really change all week. Yes, the NWS was a little late on forecasting the potential for major rainfall amounts for Friday, but at no time did it ever look like Saturday was going to be worse than a few light showers in the morning and cloudy in the afternoon with highs in the mid/upper 60s.
In fact, I'd argue that the forecast (from the NWS) barely changed from my post on Wednesday morning, i.e., "Very likely warm (high around 70F) and comfortable (dewpoints near 60F) with a few showers through sunrise, but drying out after that with mostly cloudy skies through mid-afternoon and then increasing sunshine for the game. Still not a 100% lock for dry tailgates, as a couple of models show a stray, light shower or two (nuisance level, i.e., <0.02") up through early afternoon, but no models are showing measurable rain after that." Every subsequent forecast was very close to that.
That forecast verified pretty nicely, as we had about 0.03" of rain between about 9:30 am and 10:15 am (NWS was generally calling for about 0.03" in the morning) and then no rain at all after that, with cloudy skies until about 2 pm, when we got some sun that shot the temps up from 62F to 70F in 2 hours (and the high was 71F, as per the table below from NB), so warm certainly verified, and it was still 66F at game's end. Again, kudos to the NWS. On to Wisconsin.
In fact, I'd argue that the forecast (from the NWS) barely changed from my post on Wednesday morning, i.e., "Very likely warm (high around 70F) and comfortable (dewpoints near 60F) with a few showers through sunrise, but drying out after that with mostly cloudy skies through mid-afternoon and then increasing sunshine for the game. Still not a 100% lock for dry tailgates, as a couple of models show a stray, light shower or two (nuisance level, i.e., <0.02") up through early afternoon, but no models are showing measurable rain after that." Every subsequent forecast was very close to that.
That forecast verified pretty nicely, as we had about 0.03" of rain between about 9:30 am and 10:15 am (NWS was generally calling for about 0.03" in the morning) and then no rain at all after that, with cloudy skies until about 2 pm, when we got some sun that shot the temps up from 62F to 70F in 2 hours (and the high was 71F, as per the table below from NB), so warm certainly verified, and it was still 66F at game's end. Again, kudos to the NWS. On to Wisconsin.
The investigation was fine, as the front of blue and yellow (moreso blue) had numerous puddles at 6 pm Friday; it was the prediction that those puddles would be mostly gone by early Saturday that was off - they were mostly gone from yellow, but not from blue. It happens, although blue didn't look full anyway (same for yellow), so the impact was minimal.
Tough customer. You didn't think it was nice from the time the rain stopped until after the game was over? My definition of nice is mainly no precip - everything else people can usually deal with outside of maybe extreme temps. Do you care that much about sunshine or some specific temps for a football game?
I thought it was "nice" all day. Was my favorite weather, so far, this year, as I don't love the heat or the sun and we didn't have too much of either, meaning we didn't need a canopy, like we did the first three games, but it was also nice enough to be in shorts and a t-shirt from when the rain stopped to through the rest of the day.
I generally start gameday threads 6-7 days in advance, i.e., on the Saturday night or Sunday before, since deterministic modeling inaccuracy is pretty high at 7 days and goes up very quickly beyond that, which is why the NWS doesn't post forecasts beyond 7 days. Yes, the current models show a pretty wet/stormy pattern looking likely starting late next week through the following week, but it's very hard to say which specific day might have stormy conditions and which day might be dry at 9 days out. Sometimes others start threads earlier...
