Help us prepare for the Stadium Series day weather

Coming up in 10 days exactly, the Carolina Hurricanes and Washington Capitals will be wearing uniforms they will not wear again and they will play a game outside at Carter-Finley Stadium. Hopefully it won't be raining. So I'm looking at the long-range weather forecast and it looks like we've got basically seven out of an eight-day period of rain and the only day it isn't going to rain, this is according to the long-range forecast, is apparently Saturday and Saturday night. But let's find out for real. Nate Johnson, our old friend, now is the Director of Weather Ops for NBC Universal local TV stations, one of which is WRAL TV 5.

But he used to hang out there all the time. Nate Johnson, at NSJ on Twitter. How you been, man? Good, how are you?

I'm doing very well. So long-range forecasting, and I'm not saying it's an inexact science, it's really hard. It's probably harder than, oh I don't know, me doing simple math. So how accurately do you think you could determine what the weather is going to be next Saturday night? So if you had to pin me down, if you said I need exactly how much rain it's going to be, when it's going to start, when it's going to stop, that sort of thing, that's hard to do 10 days out. You're predicting the future. There's always more uncertainty the farther out into the future you go.

That sort of makes sense, right? But we're at a point in the science where we have some tools that we can use to give us a sense of at least a range of possibilities for 10 days out. We can start to rule some things out. Pretty sure it's not going to be 80 degrees, you know, the game day, which is really good news because that's not going to be good for us, right?

We can rule some things out and we can start to talk about this far out, whether it's more likely or less likely, and that sort of thing. And that's sort of where we are right now with that forecast. Looks like this weekend, this coming weekend, it's going to be pretty wet. Then we're going to have a dry stretch, you know, early next week. And then we get to the pattern of shaping up the point toward wetter weather Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, not a rain out necessarily, but just chances of rain each one of those days. And then it's going to be warm too. At least some of the guidance pushes us up well into the 60s for highs on Thursday and Friday, potentially with some clouds and maybe some spotty showers around.

But then looking ahead, it does, just about all of the guidance really is consistent with some sort of a system like a culprit coming through sometime late Friday and then cooling us out and probably drying us out for the day on Saturday. A couple of things. The NHL can make ice outside with air temperatures even into the 70s in certain circumstances, which is to me, that's mind boggling, like the physics of that and the thermodynamics. I'm still trying to wrap my head around, but that's pretty cool.

That's what they felt they can do. Um, but rain is a big problem, not just for the comfort of the fans, but for maintaining a safe, um, ice surface for the players to play on and to keep that, you know, that ice surface healthy. So that's something that we're really looking at is the amount of rain that we're going to get, how, you know, how much we see. And then for the day on Saturday, leading up to it.

Cause not, it's not just the game, right? There's team skates, there's practices, there's all sorts of other things going on that we need to try and get in, in addition to the fan fest on Friday, and then the fan zone, you know, ahead of the game on Saturday. So there's a lot going on as of right now.

I, you know, everything points to mild and damp, at least chance of rain Thursday, Friday, maybe even Wednesday, but then things starting to dry out sometime late Friday and into the day on Saturday. If that holds, that's good news. We get the game in, everything is fine, but here's the rub, right?

It's still 10 days out. A lot can change, you know, and, and, you know, this is the same sort of thing that we deal with whenever there's snow in the forecast that we're, you know, little details, little things can change. If this thing slows up 12 hours, which is not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things for a system of the size, we could be looking at rain well into Saturday morning, and that can have implications for how much of the skates and everything are able to get done during the day on Saturday. So at this point for folks listening, you don't need to do anything, but the Carolina hurricanes, the NHL, they are all over this. They are keeping an eye on it. I've been in touch with the canes. They're there in touch with us and really paying close attention, but they are going to be prepared for every scenario. Two things to just want to go to the game at this point.

I don't even get to poncho out. We're 10 days out, right? We got a lot of time to watch this and it could, some of the ensemble members of the model suggested we might even get through the whole stretch dry.

That's unlikely, but at this point, just sit and watch it, stay tuned and see how things play out. Nate Johnson, director of weather ops, NBC universal is joining us here on the Adam Goldschule. We are 10 days out from the stadium series game. All right, so let's say we get to Wednesday of next week and it still hasn't rained. Should we worry that the system has slowed down and we're going to get like an inch of rain on Saturday and that is ultimately going to cancel the game is my guess.

There is a rain plan if we do have, you know, increment weather on Saturday, potentially that they play it on Sunday, you know, it'd be Sunday night after state Carolina and all that other stuff. That's a possibility. Nobody wants to, you know, can we do that? Yes.

Does anybody want to do that? But I think the looking, we'll have to see where we are come Wednesday, right? It may be that the system winds up being weaker and not an issue, right?

It hasn't started raining yet because there's a smaller system and it's less, it's a less consequence, right? But we'll be that much closer. We're able to speak with a lot more confidence about what we can expect for Thursday, Friday, and into Saturday next week. But at this point, you know, it's something we're going to watch it and I'm tweeting about it just because I'm interested.

Yes. And yeah, I know that other folks are as well, but at the end of the day, there's no preparation for this. The folks who are doing it preparing, they're already on it. They're already on top of this and they're keeping an eye on it. And all of this, you know, the NHL knew what they were getting into when they picked the date for the game.

Right. Look, I mean, look, they had a stadium, they had a stadium game at Dodger Stadium, like five or six years ago. They played in Los Angeles. They're eventually going to do one in the state of Florida, whether it's either in Tampa or it's in Fort Lauderdale.

They're going to figure out a way to do it there. What about the prospects of fog, which other than rain or snow, because snow isn't good for outdoor hockey either. Other than that, I would have to think that fog is the worst thing that you could possibly have. What are the prospects of fog and what would cause that? So fog is essentially when you have air that's very humid and you try to cool that air down to the point where the moisture in the air condenses and turns into a little water droplets and then that becomes difficult to seeker. Anytime you've got ice underneath a warm, moist layer of air, fog is a possibility. Sometimes we'll see that, especially we saw something very similar off the Northeast coast the last couple of days, so it's so bitterly cold up there. And you have this very cold air mass blowing over warm, moist water.

You got to see smoke and some other stuff, similar sort of deal. I'm not concerned about that right now for two reasons. Number one, I don't think we're going to have enough of a temperature differential between the ice and the air. Plus, if the forecast plays out the way we think it is, all of the moisture will have been swept out and the air will be dry enough that we won't have to worry about fog for that. If we were going to be more humid, if it was going to be rainier still, then fog would be an issue. But if it's raining, we're not going to play.

So it's one of those things where we might get both, but we probably would get neither. All right, this has nothing to do with hockey or anything. Are we getting snow here, Nate? Are we going to get snow? We haven't even had a threat of snow yet.

You know what? At this point, I'm basically calling Mother Nature's block. Like, what, I don't think it can snow here anymore. Until the atmosphere proves me wrong, I'm just, that's my forecast and I'm sticking to it. There are some model runs that are trying to get us a little bit of snow with the tail end of this weekend thing.

So like Sunday night, Monday, but I'm not, at this point, you know what, I'm going to wait until we get a little closer to it. And the likelihood is at this point, it's still going to be too warm for it to be of anything significant here. In the mountains, that may be a different story than they actually have, you know, more than just a couple of novelty flakes. But at this point, I think it's maybe a little bit of snow, if anything, but I'm not. Yeah, my bet is no snow.

And until the atmosphere proves me wrong, that's a winning bet. At NSJ on Twitter, Nate Johnson, director of weather ops, NBC Universal, local TV stations. Thank you very much, my friend. I appreciate you agreeing to do this. We'll talk to you again. My pleasure.

Take care. You got it. That's Nate Johnson. We're not, we're not, look, I know you can hear us in the mountains. You could hear us in the coast. Yeah. Up, you know, near the Virginia border. Virginia border. You can hear all that.

You can hear us a lot in a lot of places. We are just never going to get snow here in Rome. It's the worst.

It's the absolute worst. I love at least one good snow. Give me one, one a year. I just need one. That's it. I don't want it. Just give me one. And you know what? We're not getting one.