Maryland vs. Michigan in a weather delay because of lightning

Expect a little bit of humid muck once the game gets going.

Because of NCAA rules about playing football near lightning, the start of Maryland-Michigan has been delayed indefinitely. The game was scheduled to start at noon.

Here’s how things look at the moment, meaning this might not be too long of a delay:

Weather.com

Here’s how schools monitor and manage weather delays during football games:

Former Florida associate AD Chip Howard was involved with the Gators’ lengthy Idaho game delay in 2014, due to lightning in the Gainesville area.

“The lightning when it’s 15 miles [away], we let the coaches know and the referee,” Howard said. “And then when it hits at eight miles, you’re starting to doubt. That’s the easy part of it. The hard part is trying to figure out and forecast, because you’ve got television, you’ve got two coaches that are intense and highly competitive, and you’ve got the fans to worry about, first and foremost. We have pretty precise protocols that we institute as soon as that happens. So, all that stuff just kind of happens by plan, what doesn’t happen is ‘OK how long is it going to be?’ Immediately when you have a lightning strike, it’s 30 minutes before you can resume play,” per NCAA rules.

Most teams have a centralized way to monitor weather. Sometimes campuses have their own, and sometimes they use common services like AccuWeather. Florida has a volunteer lightning researcher who sits in with operations staff during games. Marshall uses third-party software specifically to track lightning.

“The biggest factor after all that rain was our field was not good,” Howard said. “I’m walking the field with the referee, and the referee’s saying, ‘You know, this is not safe.’ You know our field drains great, but there’s only so much water you can put on the field.”

Once the lightning passes, the game’s expected to be played in pretty gross, but manageable, conditions.

Temperatures will shoot up into the 70s during the early afternoon. Expect a game-time temperature around 71 degrees, surging to 79 degrees by the end of the game. Remember, our current average high temperature is 65 degrees. A temperature near 80 degrees is quite abnormal.

Humidity will be high, and leads to another weather feature for the game- possible spurts of rain.