Real Peril in the Gulf: How Isaias Could Affect Georgia/Alabama

It’s not every college football website that has a trained meteorologist on staff who spent years tracking hurricanes across the tropics. But we do here at Dawg Sports. Our good friend and Bulldog legend DavetheDawg has been tracking Tropical Storm Isaias, and has the latest on what the storm could mean for Saturday’s Georgia/Alabama game.

In the overnight hours TD#9 has strengthened into Tropical Storm Isaias and the weekend forecast for the northern Gulf coast has become more in-focus. The forecast is for a rapidly strengthening storm and the first hurricane to form in the Atlantic Basin is a virtual certainty.

NHC is projecting “Isaias” to become a very strong category 2 hurricane (winds 96-110 MPH) on its approach to an early Saturday morning landfall. Once the sustained wind threshold reaches 111 MPH or greater major hurricane criteria has been reached.

The exact point of landfall is still uncertain at this hour, but anywhere from the mouth of the Mississippi River to the extreme western Florida panhandle looks to be the most likely area with Mobile somewhere in the middle of the current forecast cone. This could change a little bit to the east or west but the bottom line is during the day on Saturday a tropical system will be moving rapidly north and encompass the greater Tuscaloosa area with strong winds (although in a weakening system), heavy rain and the ever present risk of tornadoes – especially if the system tracks a bit further westward thus putting that part of Alabama on the “dirty” side of the storm. As the system weakens, the wind field is expected to expand with the timing of this expected to occur late Saturday afternoon into the evening hours.

Alabama has a bye on 10/31. Our bye is on 10/24. There goes that possibility of postponing the game but in the grand scheme of things this isn’t that important.

I was in grad school at Alabama in 1988. A similar scenario played out when Hurricane Gilbert smashed Jamaica on its way to the Texas gulf coast. The computer modeling and forecast tracks were not nearly as good as they are today but out of an overabundance of caution the Alabama @ Texas A&M game that year was rescheduled from a September date to December 1. Gilbert ended up not affecting College Station, but the call was made, the game was postponed with much teeth gnashing as I recall.

This is a progressive storm and will move fairly rapidly to the north with improving conditions beginning early Sunday. Unfortunately it looks like Saturday is going to be an all-day weather affair for the Yellowhammer State.

Will the Conference make the call later today? Probably. This game either gets moved (to where I haven’t a clue) or postponed to the next available date – probably in December. I’ve got an idea: How about an SEC Championship Game double-header? Just kidding.

Go Dawgs!