Super Bowl Weekend Fallout Forecast for the USA

The current Fallout Forecast is for the next 72 hours, including Sunday and Super Bowl XLVIII. The Denver Broncos will play the Seattle Seahawks to decide the National Football League champion for the 2013 season. It is scheduled to be held on February 2nd, 2014, at MetLife Stadium at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey, with kickoff at 6:25pm est. This will be the first Super Bowl to be played outdoors in a cold weather environment. Current radar from NWS can be found here.

The Weather Channel is looking at a prediction of 29 degrees for a high in the evening (and a balmy 49 degrees during the day) along with a 20 percent chance of precipitation and 6 mph winds for MetLife Stadium. The area of the stadium falls under ‘medium risk’ potential.

About the map: the fallout risk map is a screenshot of the continental US water vapor analysis at the time of posting. Areas in red indicate a high potential for fallout, areas in pink indicate a medium risk, areas in yellow are cautionary, but low. The areas not covered by a color indicator will essentially be precipitation-free. This map should only be a guide and does not in any way guarantee that your outdoor area is ‘safe’ or ‘not safe’. It simply shows the risk potential, based on a number of weather indicators and atmospheric transport studies.

Atmospheric fallout increases with temperature. The warmer the air, the more likely particles will ‘fall out.’ Precipitation amounts will also increase risk potential. Snow attracts more particles vs rain. Therefore, a ‘warm snow’ is more likely to contain fallout that a ‘cold snow’. The risk to gamer-goers will be higher preceding the game, then during the game itself, if temperature predictions are correct, especially when the temp hits 32 degrees. However, the main band of precipitation over the weekend will be diagonal across the Midwest and focus north of NJ. The strongest band is showing a possible 8-12 inches from Chicago through Michigan, just north and northwest of Detroit. This is a continuation of storm “Maximus.”

The only sure bet on Superbowl Sunday, is that the vast majority of people attending and watching the game have no idea that we occasionally get ‘nuked‘ from Japan during certain weather events.

If you do go to the game, or spend any excessive time outdoors, make sure to keep airways covered with at least a scarf or N-100 particulate mask, and leave coats and boots by the door when returning home.

The largest danger of exposure to even low-level nuclear fallout is the effect on the immune system. In a weakened state, our bodies become much more effected by diseases and cancers as a result. Exposure to radiation also can affect brain function, as demonstrated by the 18% decrease in SAT scores during the peak of weapons testing .

We have been tracking weather and radiation numbers, as well as deposition from the Fukushima accident, since March of 2011. To see an excellent time-lapse of 2013 weather, go here, and keep your eye on Japan and North America as the video plays through. The weather patterns show an identical match to the areas of the country where we receive the majority of our submissions for our mutation archive; the West Coast, Northern Tier states, Great Lakes region, and East Coast down through NC/SC. We will have the interactive version of this archive up over the next few weeks, as it is currently in development. Submissions can be posted and viewed at Mutation Watch on Facebook. To see a further explanation of the history of the Fallout Forecast, and how we determine risk analysis, see the initial post for January, 24th 2014.

The next forecast will be posted on Monday, February 3rd. Stay warm, stay safe, and enjoy the game ~ Christina

*Update Jan 31 4:40 pm est:

NJ Nuke plant goes offline due to dropped control rod:  Salem Unit 2 was manually taken offline by control room operators at 10:01 a.m. Friday, according to Joe Delmar, spokesman for PSEG Nuclear, after an issue with one of the control rods. There was no threat to the health and safety of the public, and no issues with the manual shutdown, he added. At this time, the expected cause of the control rod mispositioning is believed to be a blown fuse with a more detailed investigation under way.