Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Cooler into the Weekend...

By Jay Grymes & Steve Caparotta

Another pretty February day for Wednesday ... and we stay mainly dry as we finish out the work week.

We say “mainly dry” as we’ll put a very slight chance of rain (less than 20%) in the late Friday forecast and carry a 20% chance of rain into early Saturday, but it currently looks like any light rain that might develop will be well out of the way by parade times on Saturday!



Cooler air continues to filter into the lower Mississippi Valley this evening and overnight, with mainly high clouds streaming in from the west and southwest. So we go to partly-cloudy skies tonight and into the day on Thursday, with wake-up temps running a little cooler for Thursday morning compared to Wednesday’s sunrise. Expect partly cloudy skies through the day on Thursday, with highs only reaching the low 60°s for metro Baton Rouge.

It’ll be the low 40°s to start the day again on Friday, with highs in the low to mid 60°s. Clouds may increase during the latter half of the day on Friday as a weak frontal boundary approaches from the north. It’s that front that might kick-off some patchy light rain into the early hours of Saturday, but for now we think that the front will essentially dissipate as it slides through the region, losing an focusing mechanism for more active showers.

The weekend front has an Arctic dome of high pressure in tow, but the steering currents seemed determined to turn the core of the colder air to the east before it can reach the Gulf Coast. As a result, we’ll get a brief chill for Sunday morning, with lows in the 30°s, but that will be it.

So how far down in the 30°s for Sunday morning? We’re thinking upper 30°s for metro BR, with mid 30°s north of Baton Rouge. The way it looks for now, we don’t expect much more than maybe a brief, light freeze for communities up along and north of the LA/MS state line, with little or no chance of a freeze for the I-10/12 corridor.

We’ll start a steady warm-up on Monday which will extend into mid-week, with rain chances rising from Monday into Wednesday.

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