Blog Article
Spring Weather Disrupts Baseball and Florida Festivals
From lake-effect snow delaying MLB games in Cleveland to heavy rain threatening Florida festivals, here is how this week's weather is impacting your plans.
Baseball, Barbecue, and Busted Plans: How This Week's Weather is Messing With Your Schedule
Get this, y'all. If you tried to tune into the Royals and Guardians game in Cleveland today, you probably noticed they had to shuffle the schedule around. Baseball in early April is always a gamble. But today is a special kind of messy. We are talking about lake-effect snow and temperatures that belong in January.
Spring is a transition season. The atmosphere is trying to figure out if it wants to be warm or cold, and that indecision is wrecking outdoor plans from the Great Lakes all the way down to the Gulf Coast.
The Great Lakes Deep Freeze
The air over the Midwest and Ohio Valley right now is unseasonably cold. Temperatures in Cleveland are running 20 to 25 degrees below normal. That arctic air is picking up moisture off Lake Erie and dropping up to 3 inches of snow on northern Ohio.
It is not just Ohio. Widespread freeze warnings are in effect across the Midwest. If you planted your spring garden early, you need to cover those tender plants tonight. The cold is serious enough to damage early-season agriculture.
Florida's Stalled Front
Now, flip the map down south. The Tampa Bay Wine and Food Festival kicks off tomorrow. Normally, Tampa sits pretty around 82 degrees this time of year with plenty of sunshine.
Instead, a cold front is stalled out right across the Florida peninsula. It is acting like a roadblock for tropical moisture. The Weather Prediction Center has a Marginal Risk for excessive rainfall covering the eastern and central parts of the state through Wednesday.
We could see rainfall rates of up to 4 inches per hour in the heaviest storms. That is enough water to cause urban flash flooding. If you have VIP tickets for the outdoor tasting tents in Tampa or Miami this week, you need to pack a sturdy umbrella and waterproof shoes. The ground simply cannot absorb water that fast.
The Dry Middle Ground
Right between the snow up north and the rain down south, we have a completely different problem. South-central Georgia is sitting in the dry air behind that Florida cold front.
The Storm Prediction Center has highlighted a Critical fire weather risk for the area tomorrow. The air is bone dry. Humidity levels are dropping to 20 percent, and northeast winds will be gusting near 20 mph. If a spark catches in those dry pine needles or brush, the wind will carry it fast. Please hold off on any outdoor burning if you live near Thomasville or Tifton.
Looking Ahead to the Plains
We also need to keep an eye on the central Plains. By Wednesday evening, a new system will kick up a Marginal Risk for severe storms across parts of Kansas and southern Nebraska. A compact upper-level trough is moving in from the northern Plains. As it interacts with a cold front, we will see isolated thunderstorms develop. The main threat with these storms will be isolated large hail.
Spring weather does not care about our baseball schedules or our festival tickets. The atmosphere is just doing its job of balancing out the extreme temperature differences across the continent. Keep a close eye on the local forecast before you head out this week.