Longmont company tracks effect of weather on baseball

LONGMONT — Baseball fans in the era of COVID may be starved for the ballpark experience, the smell of the hot dog stand or the call of the beer vendor, but a Longmont company will help the hardball geek learn a bit about how weather affects how far and where the ball will fly.

A collaboration between Anemoment LLC, a specialized meteorological instrument design firm located in Longmont, and Weather 

Applied Metrics, a leader in computational fluid dynamics and 3D modeling, now enables TV viewers of Chicago Cubs home games to see in real-time the effect that weather has on the trajectory of balls hit at Wrigley Field this season. 

The Chicago Cubs secured these unique capabilities as a result of a recently announced partnership involving Marquee Sports Network, the exclusive broadcaster of Cubs games not shown on national TV, and Weather Applied Metrics & ClimaCell. 

The agreement enables viewers of televised home games on 

the Marquee Sports Network to see on-screen graphics indicating how current wind and weather conditions are affecting balls hit in Wrigley Field. 

The integration of Anemoment’s Wireless Mesh Network and its wind and weather sensors mounted around Wrigley Field delivers temperature, 

relative humidity, air pressure, and wind (in three-dimensions) — data used by Weather Applied Metrics to generate the graphics displayed on the screen. These graphics predict the effects of weather on a ball’s trajectory depending on where it might be hit as well as the weather effects on balls actually hit. 

While some might call it magic, Weather Applied Metrics relies on computational fluid dynamics to model how the wind flow impacts objects, in this case baseballs. Computational fluid dynamics has been used in professional sports since the 1990s. 

Early adopters of the technology include top-tier motor sports, yachting, and the Olympics. 

“As meteorologists, we’ve always known that weather has a huge impact on sports,” John Farley, chief technology officer for Weather Applied Metrics, said in discussing the project. Weather can influence a ball’s trajectory in a number of ways. Balls travel farther in warm air than in cold, and wind can impact how far a ball will travel. Humidity can reduce the speed of a ball because the ball absorbs moisture from the air.

“Accuracy serves as the foundation for all of our products,” said Stephen Osborn, chief technology officer and co-founder of Anemoment. “Their application of our sensor is unique and extremely exciting, especially for baseball fans today.” 

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