Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Hard Freeze Warning!

By Jay Grymes & Steve Caparotta

Thought it was cold for Wednesday’s wake-up?  Wait until Thanksgiving’s sunrise -- many of you will be 10° or more colder than earlier today!
That’s why a HARD FREEZE WARNING will go into effect for the northern half of the WAFB viewing area overnight and extend until 9:00am Thursday morning!  And even our southern viewers will be under a FREEZE WARNING.

We’re calling for a morning low of 25° for the Capital City, with low 20°s for many WAFB communities north and east of the metro area.  As we mentioned yesterday, we still think freeze durations will run up to 10 hours or more for parts of metro Baton Rouge, with freezing temps lasting as much as 14 hours or more on the north side of the LA/MS state line.
The freeze will extend all the way to the coast -- we’re calling for several hours at or below 32° even for Houma and Morgan City.
Protect the tender plants, check that the pets have a place to get out of the freezing temperatures, and PLEASE be extra careful if you’ll be using space heaters or other types of supplemental heat.  Check on the elderly too.
Steve did a little “data mining” to compare this Thanksgiving morning forecast with all past Thanksgiving days.  While the record low for November 28th is 23° (set in 1938), the record low for a Thanksgiving Thursday (based on records back to 1930) is currently 27° -- looks like tomorrow morning will become the coldest Thanksgiving morning in more than 80 years!

The really good news is that while it will get bitterly cold for Thanksgiving morning, we’ll rebound nicely through the day under sunny skies.  Highs for just about all of us should reach the 50°s, which will feel pretty good given that we’ve not seen readings in the 50°s since Sunday afternoon!
Most WAFB communities should expect another freeze on Friday morning -- just not as cold and not nearly as prolonged.  Friday will be another sunny day, with afternoon highs getting up around 60° for the Red Stick -- good news for the Black Friday marathon shoppers.
And the warming trend continues into the weekend.  Some WAFB neighborhoods north and east of the Capital City could see another brief, light freeze for Saturday morning but mostly sunny skies will take just about everyone well into the 60°s by the afternoon.  By Sunday, some viewers will see temps up near 70° for the afternoon.

We’ve got scattered rains in the forecast for Monday and Wednesday with a dry Tuesday in-between.  But maybe more importantly -- given this week’s chill -- temps will be running normal to above-normal for the opening days of December.

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