Monday’s high temperature of 89° for BR’s Metro Airport is not only the highest reading thus far this year, but stands as the ‘warmest’ daytime reading since October 16th of last year. And today makes 22 days during April with highs at 80° or above for the airport. That’s not a record for April, nor is April 2012’s average monthly temperature of 70°, but both are well above normal and continue the run of warmth that has dominated 2012 through the first four months of the year. Indeed, the average temperature for January-through-April 2012 is 64° -- and that is an all-time high, at least for the period of 1930 to present!
Yes, it may be the last day of April, but it sure felt more like late May this afternoon, and the forecast through the week keeps temps running above-normal through the first week of May.
A few of you had a decent rain late Sunday, and while today remained dry, we expect isolated to scattered mainly-afternoon showers and t-storms to return for the latter half of the week and continue into the weekend. For now we are keeping a “mainly dry” forecast for Tuesday, although a stray shower can’t be ruled out given the daytime heating expected and the fuel in the form of our moist, Gulf air mass.
A look at the final rain numbers for April shows most of us had below-normal rainfall, but Baton Rouge is actually running a bit of a surplus for the year thanks to relatively 'wet' months in February and March.
Now the rains this week won’t be frontal rains -- these rains will have the look of something a bit more summer-like, with the inbound flow off the Gulf thanks in part to the clockwise spin associated with a high pressure ridge along the Atlantic Coast.
Wednesday’s current forecast calls for a 30% coverage for the WAFB viewing area, but we’ll have to re-evaluate that on Tuesday afternoon. A (non-tropical) disturbance over southern Florida is forecasted to send some energy our way by mid-week. Our in-house Titan9 PrecisionCast is rather aggressive with this disturbance and paints a fairly wet picture for our area by Wednesday, while other weather models are suggesting a lessened impact along the central Gulf Coast. We should have a better idea by Tuesday afternoon, assuming that the various computer forecasts come to a better sense of agreement.
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| Titan9 PrecisionCast projection for 1 p.m. on Wednesday, painting a rather 'wet' picture for our area. |
In the meantime -- if you haven’t already -- this week would be a good time to get your home’s A/C serviced! And the next time you pass by the store, pick up an extra bottle of sunscreen!
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