For two consecutive weeks, South Florida has seen an active weather pattern that has led to the Miami Hurricanes having their first games of the season being interrupted by lightning.
The delays have usually come in the second quarter, delaying the game just over an hour in both of the Hurricanes’ early contests. The delay during the game against Florida Atlantic last Friday led to the game ending at nearly 1 am Saturday morning.
I wanted to find out what if there was something unusual going on with the South Florida weather recently to cause two consecutive lighting delays in a span of six days for the Hurricanes.
Looking for answers, I sought out perhaps the chief authority on South Florida weather.
I spoke with Miami’s NBC 6 Chief Meteorologist John Morales. Mr. Morales has been a presence in the South Florida area for the past 25 years, and has won numerous awards for his work, winning three Emmy Awards as well as earning the 2007 American Meteorological Society Outstanding Contribution to the Advance of Applied Meteorology Award.
Mr. Morales was able to tell me why it seems as if there has been an outbreak of severe weather in South Florida, along with his thoughts on the NCAA delaying the games.
What has caused the weather conditions in South Florida the past two weeks that has led to the lightning delays?
In Florida we have a rainy season that begins in June and ends in October. Along with the rainy season, comes along these afternoon and evening thunderstorms, which don’t stop being an almost daily occurrence until the third or fourth week of October.
Is this common for South Florida this time of year?
What’s going on is a combination of our normal weather pattern. Nothing’s really changed – as far as are we getting more thunderstorms or less – but I think the NCAA is more sensitive now to protecting the fans and players more so than in the past. What I think is going on is that when they detect lightning anywhere near the stadium, they are stopping the games.
During the game against Bethune-Cookman, there was a very active weather pattern. On that particular day, the thunderstorms were very wide spread around the metro area of South Florida. So on that day, there were wide spread thunderstorms, so I can see how there were lightning strikes.
In regards to the other night, the storms were 23-25 miles away out over the Everglades and the sugar fields south of Lake Okeechobee.
The problem is, it was night time already; the sky was dark and it was well past sunset, and people were observing some heat lightning as it is commonly known. It’s not raining – you can’t even hear the thunder because it’s so far away – but you can see the lightning bolts in the sky because it night time.
Thunderstorms are so tall – extending up to 10 miles into the atmosphere – and because it’s so tall, and with the lightning occurring so far within the thunderhead, you can still see it even if its 25 miles away.
I’ve come to learn that according to the FAU athletic director, they have a lightning detection system that showed that there had been a lighting strike that occurred within 12 miles of the FAU stadium. I did some research and found that the system wasn’t reliable beyond a 2.5 mile radius. So, when the system went off, indicating that there was a lightning bolt 12 miles away, there is a pretty good chance that it was a false alarm and an inaccurate reading with the storm was so far away.
Between the information from their lightning detection system, and seeing the lightning in the sky, they made the call to stop the game. But in reality, there were no lightning bolts within 20 miles of the stadium.
That’s interesting. A few people that I know that live in South Florida were saying that the lightning bolts were nowhere near the FAU stadium Friday night.
Yeah, their stadium is only a mile and a half away from the beach. If you sit in the nosebleed seats of the stadium and you look east, you can see the ocean. If you’re familiar with how south Florida is laid out, when I’m talking Everglades – that’s way, way out to the left. There was no lightning anywhere near the stadium. I’ve talked to fellow meteorology colleges in south Florida and they agree that there was no lightning anywhere near the stadium. Its more than likely FAU’s lightning detection system gave them a false alarm, and combine that with the fact that when you can see lightning at night from a distance of 30, 40, or 50 miles away, the call to suspend the game was way too conservative in terms of any harm that could’ve come to the fans or players. There is just no way that there would have been any lightening close to the stadium.
How will this affect South Florida football all together?
In this new paradigm of the NCAA being so cautious, making sure everybody is safe, and they are really enforcing this now; more so than they have in the past.
There are going to be so many delays in the September football games; not just UM football games, but all the other colleges and high schools because September and the first half of October is so active with thunderstorms every single day.
You are going to see this repeat itself maybe twice again next year and maybe three times the year after that. It’s just going to happen a lot because our Florida weather pattern doesn’t really calm down until the end of October. So all football games played in the September and the beginning of October are going to have this problem.
So this is a common occurrence every year during football season, whether it is the Hurricanes, Dolphins, or high school football, and is nothing new to anyone who lives in South Florida?
It’s nothing new. What has changed is the enforcement of the idea of keeping people safe in the stadiums, whether its players or fans. I think that these athletic organizations; whether it’s the NCAA, NFL, or high school leagues are just being a lot more cautions than they have been in the past and they are stopping games where in the past they would have not stopped games. Any football game played in Florida until the end of the rainy season is going to run the risk of being stopped for the threat of lightning within a certain distance of the stadium.
Any Prediction for how the Hurricanes will do this Saturday against the Nebraska game?
Man I don’t know! [Laughs]
But hopefully they can pull it out.
[end of call]
The weather forecast predicts scattered thunderstorms and a 50% chance of rain, which Mr. Morales has pointed out, is to be expected for the next few weeks. Hopefully the weather will hold up this Saturday. Kickoff is at 3:30, still early enough in the day to not be affected by any evening thunderstorms such as the ones that have interrupted the Hurricanes past two games.
I would like to thank Mr. Morales for his time and using his knowledge to give us a clear understanding the way the weather works in South Florida.
Main Photo:
