Ungoy wrote:
To get an updated idea of what kind of weather BYU will be facing tomorrow, I fulled up tomorrow's forecast on several different sites. The current forecast is much more favorable than we were first led to believe.
Forecast for University, MS, Sept. 3 2011 4:00 PM
94 Degrees
40% Humidity
Feels like 98 Degrees
Yes that's still hot, but a 98 Degree heat index is a lot lower than the 113 I've been hearing around. If this is the actual conditions tomorrow, weather will be a non-factor.
Yeah, but that is not going to be actual conditions--the forecast you are looking at is not the forecast for the 50 yard line of an artificial turf playing field, which is where the game will be played. Weather forecasts record temperature in the shade, generally at the top of some pole mounted weather-station. Unfortunately football games are not played in the shade nor on the top of a pole. The game tomorrow will be played in direct sunlight on artificial turf where temps will be drastically higher. Have you ever noticed on hot days walking across an asphalt parking lot that the worst of the heat radiates up at you from the ground? Synethetic turfs are even worse than asphalt.
A study of synthetic turf at BYU in 2002 showed that when the temperature of grass was 78 degrees, the temperature of the synthetic turf was 117 degrees--BYU has reported a maximum temperature at Provo of 200 degrees on their synthetic turf. Penn State also did a study when air temperatures were 79, 78, and 85 degrees. The temperatures for the synthetic turf were 120, 130, and 146 degrees. Note that the air temperatures for these studies was considerably less than the 94 degrees forecast for tomorrow.
http://www.health.state.ny.us/environmental/outdoors/synthetic_turf/crumb-rubber_infilled/fact_sheet.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The turf at Ole Miss is legendarily hot--teams have had to replace shoes at halftime because the soles have melted.