Cold air outbreaks continue to make their way from Canada into the US as we progress through late April and it looks like a favorable overall upper-level weather pattern for this to continue right into early May. A strong cold front at the leading edge of this latest cold air outbreak barreled through the Ohio Valley and eastern US on Saturday producing severe thunderstorm activity along the way and today will feature much cooler conditions in the Mid-Atlantic region and Northeast US as compared to the “pre-frontal” warmth on Saturday. As an example, temperatures climbed well up into the 70’s in Philly on Saturday and a stiff S-SW wind was blowing out as the Phillies played the Rockies. The Home Run Forecast Index (HRFI) was high for Saturday’s game in Philly – an 8 out of 10 – and Nick Castellanos ended his power drought with his first home run of the year and actually his first since August of 2022. In fact, Castellanos ended up with two home runs on the day taking advantage of the warm conditions with the wind blowing out.
For today, the weather will be a different story in the Mid-Atlantic region and Northeast US and a widespread colder-than-normal air mass dominates from the Plains to the eastern seaboard. Even the Dallas metro region in Texas is experiencing this chill with temperatures way down in the 40’s during the morning hours on Sunday. The impact of this cold air outbreak on the HRFI is quite noticeable in many areas today with very low index values of “1” showing up for today’s games in places like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Minnesota, Milwaukee (roof today?), Chicago (Cubs) – and even the Texas Rangers (roof today?) will have unusually low HRFI index values for today’s game. The end result is that in these numerous locations the weather will be much more unfavorable today for baseballs to travel as opposed to, for example, the conditions yesterday in South Philly for the Phillies and Rockies game.
Meteorologist Paul Dorian