Rain Clouds Loom Over Baseball’s Start in Washington

(Bloomberg) -- Major League Baseball has scheduled its much delayed season opener for Thursday night, with the Washington Nationals set to meet the New York Yankees, and doctor Anthony Fauci, the voice of Covid caution, scheduled to throw the first pitch.

That is, of course, if nature allows. The current Washington forecast calls for a 60% chance of rain and the possibility of some thunderstorms, the National Weather Service said. The game is on for 7:08 p.m. New York time.

But hope is something every baseball fan knows well, and there is reason to be optimistic the game will go on, said Bryan Jackson, a forecaster with the U.S. Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. Measurable rain can mean anything down to 1/100th of an inch -- not enough to stop a pitch.

“As for the heavy rain, it could be quite limited east of the mountains,” Jackson said. And east of the Appalachians is squarely where Washington is.

If the Yankees and the Nationals get delayed, or even rained out, baseball fans can still catch the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers set to play Thursday’s second game staring at 10:08 p.m. New York time. The forecast in Southern California is for fog but, so far, no rain.

Fortunately the game wasn’t played Wednesday, when a strong line of thunderstorms dropped quarter-sized hail in Virginia and toppled trees and power lines, the U.S. Storm Prediction Center said.

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