By Doug Schneider - @Race4caster
 |  Forecast in Celsius and km/h. Click to enlarge |
Today's weather at Watkins Glen will be much improved compared to yesterday, but there's still a small chance of a shower in the afternoon. The odds favor a dry race, but I can't rule out the possibility of a shower toward the end of the race.
Fog has been observed around the area, with visibility at the Elmira airport at a quarter mile at 6 am. Any fog at the track will be in the process of lifting around 8 am when the morning warm up session starts. If the fog is thick enough, it could delay the session. At the start of the race, it will be mostly sunny with a light southwest wind. Temperatures will warm to around 80 degrees by 2 pm.
A broad upper level trough will be over the region today, and it will create just enough instability to spark some showers in the Finger Lakes region this afternoon. This is a simulation of what one model (HRRR) thinks the radar could look like this afternoon, from noon to 5 pm:
Fog has been observed around the area, with visibility at the Elmira airport at a quarter mile at 6 am. Any fog at the track will be in the process of lifting around 8 am when the morning warm up session starts. If the fog is thick enough, it could delay the session. At the start of the race, it will be mostly sunny with a light southwest wind. Temperatures will warm to around 80 degrees by 2 pm.
A broad upper level trough will be over the region today, and it will create just enough instability to spark some showers in the Finger Lakes region this afternoon. This is a simulation of what one model (HRRR) thinks the radar could look like this afternoon, from noon to 5 pm:
Sometimes this model develops too many showers in this type of situation, so I think the coverage of showers will be a little more sparse than what it is showing. I'd put the chance of a shower hitting the track today at about 20%, with the timing of possible showers between 2 pm and 5 pm.
