Gwinnett County’s best known sporting event comes to town next week — the AT&T Classic golf tournament, to be played at Sugarloaf Country Club in Duluth. This PGA tournament has suffered in the past from bad weather when it was contested during the last weekend in March, just before the Masters, including having sleet, snow and rain fall several years ago.

As a result, the PGA moved the tournament to the third weekend in May last year, and golf fans saw picture perfect weather. I’ve been keeping an eye on the long range forecasts for next week, and unfortunately, the weather picture does not look good.

The image to the right shows an animated view of the GFS model prediction for temperature, wind and 12 hour rainfall from 1 AM on Thursday through 1 PM on the Monday after the tournament. As you can see, there’s a lot of dark blue and purple moving through Georgia for most of the tournament, with the exception of Saturday morning, when things take a little break. The weather finally clears out on Sunday night, just as the Classic is supposed to end.

Of course, forecasts could change in the next 7 to 10 days or so, but the 6-10 and 8-14 day forecasts from the CPC are both calling for more than usual rainfall and cooler than normal temperatures. Accuweather has also been fairly consistent in calling for rain when the Classic is going to be played.

After a 10 day period with little or no rainfall, we’re due for some rain, and we’re likely to get some beginning on Thursday and lasting through the weekend. After some calm weather early on the week of the 12th, it’s the rain scenario outlined above.

As someone who enjoys the golf tournament every year, I’ll be disappointed if the forecast comes true. On the other hand, given the drought, I’ll take the rain compared to last year, when only 1.1 inch of rain fell for the entire month of May.

Posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Categories: Short Term Forecasts.
Tags: AT&T Classic.
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