If you are concerned about hail, bring a tarp in the event your windows get hailed on and smashed through. Place electronics you dont carry in (not advised, leave them at home or on your person) and make sure its about as waterproof as you can get. Saw a lot of broken windshields coming out of 2012, and q lot of water damage.
Or park in covered parking.
Wednesday’s forecast for St. Louis is not promising: Thunderstorms likely, some severe. On one broadcast the possibility of tornadoes was mentioned.
Those of us who live in St. Louis recognize this as normal spring weather; we have put up with it all our lives and are surviving quite well. However, the prospect of rain during the load in is not a welcome development.
as a native to st. louis, the weather out here is always “extreme”, for lack of better word. the weather here changes so dramatically that the weather forecasts are sometimes proven wrong. while st. louis is grinding into tornado season, with that we get strong winds and heavy rains. the weather has to have a change from hot to cold, from what i’ve noticed around here. the flights are seldom cancelled due to the weather here, at least from what i know. unless it’s a snowstorm, it’s not uncommon to see st. louisians out and about in the midst of a tornado watch/drill.
when you arrive in stl, just keep your car somewhere safe and keep your windows rolled up. we don’t get hail too terribly large around here either.
This is a bit of a misconception. The dome is not so well engineered that it would survive, unharmed, a direct hit from a moderately powerful tornado. It is quite likely that the roof of the dome would fail in addition to the windows around the outside of the dome, causing a flurry of flying debris and hail to rain down on the dome. The walls of the dome wouldn’t necessarily collapse or anything, but it would be far from a safe situation. Tornadoes are scary, powerful things.
Severe storms in the Midwest aren’t exactly uncommon and even when tornadoes do touch down, their path of destruction tends to be fairly narrow and short. So it’s not exactly the most likely thing in the world that the Dome is directly hit by a tornado, but it’s something to be aware of. Everyone is hit by hail though…
As of right now, looking out of the window in school here in STL, it´s nice and sunny! Hopefully it can stay this way! I´ve known the weather here to change so fast that you cant really predict what´s going to happen later this week.
Small note for the load-in teams: bring towels. Not little shop rags either - legit towels.
It’s one of those things we said we needed one year during a rainy load-in, and then immediately forgot. Luckily it came up again Saturday during packing.
Thanks for the suggestion to bring towels. I’m concerned about our stuff getting wet while waiting to get into the dome. Gonna see if we can score some tarps before we leave as well.
Fun times:
So far the day 3 outlook from the SPC shows possibility for localized large hail and a tornado or two because of forecast uncertainty so I’m not worried. A large steel building at least for hail is better than anywhere with glass windows.
I think the best example of how fine we will be is footage from the 2008 tornado hit to the Georgia Dome itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkfu4I9W2T8. They ended up delaying for about an hour and then completed the game.
I was on the floor for 2012 and can tell you that the Dome staff as well as FIRST staff have multiple precautions in place in case of emergency. The best thing to do is to stay calm, listen for announcements, and don’t be a hero.
I heard that St Louis is getting hit today with severe storms. Hopefully that doesn’t interfere with any teams travel plans.
Hitchhikers always have their towels.
I’ll be at the dome putting fields together so I’m hoping to get in before the storms hit and I’m also hoping their fury is spent by the time we have to leave.
The most likely time of arrival for the severe storms approaching St. Louis is between 2pm and 4pm. The most likely threat is damaging wind, large hail, and lightning according to the Storm Prediction Center.
This is for today, April 26, 2016, not tomorrow during load in.
– your friendly neighborhood meteorologist
I wonder if there is a possibility that FIRST could allow load-in prior to 1pm, or allow pre-staging inside the big doors rather than the sidewalk. This would decrease the amount of teams caught in the the storm.
It’s probably more up to the venue and possibility of getting early volunteers than what’s desired though. My team will have adults capable of fulfilling the temporary spots, if need be.
Neither rain, nor snow will stop you from getting your robots to the the Championship.
Hopefully nobody reenacts the opening of the ‘Wizard of Oz’.
Sorry, I was talking about today, not tomorrow. (Confused)
Today’s storms will affect flights, though. And you want to be careful driving.
Tomorrow bears watching closely as well.
I think the big issue would be getting the volunteers in place for crowd control. I know inspectors were told to meet at 12:30, I imagine all of the others involved were asked to show up around the same time to get ready for load in as well.