The 2018 Trans Am Series Presented by Pirelli kicks off its opening round this weekend at the historic Sebring International Raceway. Overall, the forecast will be really nice throughout the weekend, but a cold front will be moving through the area on Friday. The good news is that temperatures will cool down a little into the comfortable 70s, but there may be a few passing showers to deal with on Friday.

Looking at the long range models for Friday, those shower chances will be very small and scattered in nature, and it looks like most of that may push through before the cars even take to the track during the morning sessions. I will keep a 20% chance in the forecast at this point, but will adjust that as needed as the week progresses. Skies are expected to be partly cloudy, but there will be a good supply on sunshine making through the clouds. After starting off around 66 degrees at 8:00 AM, temperatures will climb into the lower 80s to near 81 degrees for the afternoon high. Winds will be out of the NW at 6-11 MPH.

The cold front will have brought a slightly cooler and drier air mass to the area, and you will definitely notice that on Saturday and Sunday. Another thing you will notice is the increased sunshine over Sebring. Skies will be mostly sunny on both days, with Sunday being the clearest day. Highs will top out in the upper 70s on Saturday and the mid-70s on Sunday, with both days starting off in the upper 50s at 8:00 AM. Winds will mainly be out of the north at 6-10 on Saturday, and out of the north-northwest at 6-12 MPH on Sunday.

I will have updates throughout the week on our website and on our social media feeds. Remember that our main forecasts will be posted on the Racecast Weather Twitter feed (@RacecastWx), as we try to continue to build our audience and keep any confusion out of the way.

We want to thank Lux Performance for becoming our forecast partners for the Trans Am Series Presented by Pirelli for the 2018. Be sure to stop by their site at LuxPerformance.com and check out the latest on what they have going on.

If you would like to be a partner with Racecast Weather, please feel free to contact us through our contact page on our site. We have very affordable plans no matter what the size of your budget.

By Doug Schneider

Back in December, I took a look at the 3-month long term weather outlook for Florida, covering January, February, and March. I thought I'd follow up that post with another look at the month of March. 

That three-month outlook favored above normal temperatures and below normal precipitation. Through January and February, that outlook seems to be working out. Using Winter Haven, Florida as my data point due to its central location in the state between Sebring, St. Pete, and Daytona, Jaunary had slightly below normal temperatures and slightly below normal precipitation. For February, temperatures have been much warmer than normal - in fact, there has been a streak of 11 consecutive days at Winter Haven where the temperature has reached 80 degrees, and 10 days in a row where the low has stayed above 60 degrees. Precipitation has been close to normal, but with a caveat - all the rain in February (0.99 inches) fell on one day early in the month, so 15 of the 16 days this month have not had measurable precipitation. 

The outlook for March calls for the dry and mild pattern of February to continue - above normal temperatures (left image) and below normal precipitation (right image):

To quantify those images, here are pie charts that show the probabilities of the three possible outcomes - above normal, normal, or below normal temperature and precipitation at Sebring:

The most likely of the three outcomes in March is above normal temperatures at 41% probability, and below normal precipitation at 46%. 

As with any outlook, keep in mind that this is a prediction of conditions that are averaged over an entire month. There may be a cold and wet weekend that could ruin a race, but this forecast could still be accurate. But overall, I think this is an outlook that bodes well for race fans.

March is when our races forecasts hit full stride. We start the month at Sebring for Trans Am action, followed by IndyCar and PWC at St. Pete the second weekend, followed by the 12 Hours of Sebring the third weekend. After that, we'll have forecasts for PWC at COTA and Trans Am at Road Atlanta. Be sure to follow @RaecastWx on Twitter, as it will be our primary source for our forecasts and live weather updates through the racing season.

By Doug Schneider

Here's how well I did with the forecast for the Bathurst 12 Hour (I'm doing the temperature verification in Fahrenheit because it is a finer scale than Celsius) :

There's a weather station located just 1.2 km north of the Mount Panorama Circuit pit lane, on the Charles Sturt University campus, and data at the site is easily accessible on the Australia Bureau of Meteorology website. It's always nice to have a weather station that is very close to a track to give representative data to verify the forecast against.

Mount Panorama had beautiful weather for the entire event, and compared to last year's scorcher, temperatures were much more pleasant. The models never wavered in their depictions of the weather pattern through the week leading up to the race, so I was pretty confident in the forecast and never had to make big changes from one update to the next. That's a good feeling.

I did have a chance of showers mentioned on Saturday, and while there was no rain recorded at the track or the weather station that day, there were scattered showers around the Bathurst area that just avoided the track. As I mentioned in the posts, showers developed over the Blue Mountains and were able to track into the Bathurst area in the afternoon. So the 30% to 40% chance of showers in the forecast was fairly representative of what happened. A little more cloud cover than expected on Friday and a little less cloud cover on Saturday were probably why I missed the high temperatures those days by 3 to 5 degrees. 

Overall, I'm happy with how the forecast turned out, especially considering the challenge of forecasting for the Southern Hemisphere. 

The chance of showers for today continues in the latest forecast update for the Bathurst 12 Hour. Showers are expected to develop near the Blue Mountains in the late morning hours, then track toward the west through the afternoon. The time period when showers are most likely at Mount Panorama will be between noon and 5 pm. Qualifying for the race is scheduled between 11 am and 12:25 pm, so I think the chances of dry conditions for qualifying are good. The support races - Radical Australia Cup, Skye Sands Combined Sedans, and Group 5 racing - may be affected by a shower. I expect that any showers will be short-lived, and produce around a tenth of an inch of rain - not a heavy amount but perhaps enough to slow the action for a little while. 

If rain falls at the track, then fog is likely to develop Saturday night and early Sunday morning. If no rain occurs, then there probably won't be fog, or at least not very dense fog.We'll just have to wait and see.

The weather for race day continues to look great, with plenty of sunshine, no chance of rain, and a high temperature in the mid 20s C or near 80 F. 

For those of us in the United States, Bathurst is 16 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, so the race will begin at 1:15 pm EST Saturday. A live stream can be found at ​www.bathurst12hour.com.au.