ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 6, 1995 TAG: 9512060049
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: S.D. HARRINGTON STAFF WRITER
DON'T KNOW WHY there's no ball up in the sky - stormy weather. It may rain; it may just be cold, but bad weather is 2 for 2 at Salem Stadium for the Division III college football championship.
Sports analysts are spending this week telling readers whether it will be Rowan's speedy defense or Wisconsin-La Crosse's wide-open passing game that prevails Saturday in the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl.
But anyone who was around for the first two games in Salem would be happier with the answer to another question: Should you bring an extra layer of clothes or an umbrella? Or both?
"The weather for this event has been unique, to say the least," says Carey Harveycutter, the game's director.
Harveycutter says that when city officials were bidding to bring the game to Salem Stadium, they calculated the average weather for the second Saturday in December - the day the national championship game for Division III college football teams is always held.
The average temperature was something like 52 degrees, he recalls. The chance of rain averaged 10 percent, and chance of snow was a little less than 1 percent.
Salem won the bid - probably not because of the weather, because the game had been previously held in Bradenton, Fla.
But the weather Salem experienced during the first two years didn't exactly fulfill the predictions.
Two days before the big game in 1993 "it was beautiful," Harveycutter recalled. The teams practiced in short sleeves.
But on Friday, it poured rain. By Saturday, the wind chill was 3 degrees below zero.
"It had been blowing snow sideways," he recalls.
The second year, "Thursday was glorious." Friday was a beautiful day too, Harveycutter says.
But by kickoff time Saturday, it was pouring. And the next day it turned cold.
Harveycutter has learned from the first two years and has a weather theory of his own for this year's game.
"If it runs true to form," Harveycutter says, Saturday will be sunny. It will rain Sunday. And Monday will be cold.
Jerry Stenger at the state climatologist's office in Charlottesville says Harveycutter's theory may be in the right order - just a day off.
Friday may be sunny, Saturday raining, and Sunday colder, says Stenger, the state climatologist's research coordinator.
"The potential exists for another damp Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl," Stenger says.
But he cautions not to put too much faith in that forecast, since it was made four days before kickoff.
A meteorologist at the National Weather Service, Jan Jackson, adds another possibility for Saturday's game.
An arctic front is expected to reach the Roanoke Valley by Saturday, bringing cold air and wind, Jackson says.
But he predicts that any rain should taper off by Saturday morning.
Harveycutter is keeping his fingers crossed the rest of the week with his prediction, while keeping in close contact with the National Weather Service.
"Whatever the weather is," Harveycutter says, "we're going to have a football game."
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Chart by staff: Predicting the '95 Stagg Bowl weather.by CNBcolor.