The weather forecast for Phillies Opening Day against the Braves doesn't look good

Very little can put a frown on the faces of Philadelphia Phillies fans with the 2024 season set to begin and an Opening Day tilt with the rival Atlanta Braves featuring a match-up of two of the best pitchers in all of Major League Baseball with Zack Wheeler and Spencer Strider expected to take the mound.

Well, almost anything.

With the threat of nasty weather in Philadelphia on Thursday looking likely, Phillies fans may have to wait a little while longer for the Opening Day festivities to begin. But how long?

As of right now, the outlook for Thursday's game is not promising. Recent reports on game day conditions predict a 70 percent chance of rain throughout Thursday morning and continuing well beyond the 3:05 p.m. ET start time. If MLB and the Phillies look to delay the start of the game, the chance of rainfall is currently predicted to be 24 percent in the early evening, with the outside temperature dropping to 38 degrees.

The chilly and nasty weather forecast for Opening Day will likely present challenging playing conditions throughout the game. Depending on how weather models look later on Wednesday, the impending rain could force the Phillies to cancel Thursday's game ahead of time. Not the result players and Phillies fans were hoping for. Welcome back from Florida, boys.

What happens if weather postpones the Phillies home opener?

As Phillies fans are well aware, the fate of baseball games in March and April in the Northeast is always a roll of the dice. You could be looking at seasonally warm days or the last brutal punch of winter. Baseball schedule makers take this into account for the first couple weeks of the season, with a few gaps in the schedule to account for the possibility of Opening Day rainouts.

Such is the case for the Phillies during their first homestand. The Phillies are scheduled to play on Thursday, with an off day on Friday before they wrap up the opening series against the Braves with two consecutive games on Saturday and Sunday. That leaves open the possibility that Opening Day could be easily moved to Friday.

The good news is that if the game is moved to Friday, the weather conditions, as of right now, look ideal for a baseball game. With only a six percent chance of rain in the forecast and a predicted high temperature of 56 degrees in the afternoon, there appears to be little doubt that we will see a baseball game on Friday if circumstances call for it.

A lot could change between now and Thursday, so we'll all keep our fingers crossed that the weather outlook changes in the right direction for Opening Day.