By Doug Schneider
How well did I forecast the weather for the Roar Before the Rolex 24? Well, like most weather forecasts, there were some hits and some misses.
One nice thing about Daytona International Speedway is that Daytona Beach International Airport (KDAB) is located right behind the backstretch, so the temperatures and rainfall at the airport are representative of what happened at the track.
The biggest miss in the forecast was temperatures on Friday. The high that day only reached 56 degrees. It stayed cloudy for most of the day, with clouds becoming scattered only around sunset. Low clouds are very difficult to forecast, as the mechanisms that can form low clouds often occur on small scales and can be very weak. And only a few breaks in the clouds at the right time of the day can raise temperatures substantially. In hindsight, I should have stuck closer to my original temperature forecast for Friday, which had highs around 60. There were some isolated showers around on Friday morning, but they never affected the track.
The rest of the forecast was good, with Sunday being on the money. Scattered light rain showers hit the speedway late in the morning, and again in the early afternoon. The total rainfall from these showers was 0.07 inches, and in my posts, I forecast rain amounts less than a tenth of an inch.
One nice thing about Daytona International Speedway is that Daytona Beach International Airport (KDAB) is located right behind the backstretch, so the temperatures and rainfall at the airport are representative of what happened at the track.
The biggest miss in the forecast was temperatures on Friday. The high that day only reached 56 degrees. It stayed cloudy for most of the day, with clouds becoming scattered only around sunset. Low clouds are very difficult to forecast, as the mechanisms that can form low clouds often occur on small scales and can be very weak. And only a few breaks in the clouds at the right time of the day can raise temperatures substantially. In hindsight, I should have stuck closer to my original temperature forecast for Friday, which had highs around 60. There were some isolated showers around on Friday morning, but they never affected the track.
The rest of the forecast was good, with Sunday being on the money. Scattered light rain showers hit the speedway late in the morning, and again in the early afternoon. The total rainfall from these showers was 0.07 inches, and in my posts, I forecast rain amounts less than a tenth of an inch.
