Wednesday proved to be another in a run of hot and humid days, although clouds through much of the afternoon filtered the sunshine which slowed the rate of heating. In fact, the cloud deck became so thick by the late afternoon that temps dipped back down into the 80°s for a number of locations. Even so, temps around the metro area managed to climb to around 90°, and dew points in the mid to upper 70°s drove the Heat Index to 100° or more as early as 11AM.
The Southern Plains upper-level ridge continues to put a clamp on rain chances over the viewing area, but the eastern “edge” of the ridge continues to ease its way westward as the ridge contracts. Over the past several days, we’ve been watching disturbances sliding around the northern and eastern edge of that ridge. On Monday, most of the storms were rolling north-to-south through Alabama. Yesterday, the storms tracked through Arkansas and Mississippi. And today, while the main activity continued to run from Arkansas into Mississippi and western Alabama, Titan9 Doppler did pick up a few showers and a couple of t-storms along the Louisiana coast.
But for the vast majority of WAFB neighborhoods, Wednesday was just another hot-and-humid day.
We’re calling for spotty rains for Friday -- coverage for the WAFB viewing area at 20% or less -- with highs again returning to the low to mid 90°s. The upper-ridge looks like it will continue to weaken and shift to the west during the weekend, allowing for better rain chances -- and a slight drop in daytime highs -- for both Saturday and Sunday. We’re calling for 20% to 30% rain chances for Saturday and a 30% to 40% chance for Sunday. We’ll keep scattered afternoon rains in the forecast for next week as well.
So what about Tropical Depression #5? A ‘Hurricane Hunter’ aircraft visited the storm during the afternoon and found winds sufficient for an upgrade, making T.D. #5 the fifth ‘named’ storm of the 2012 season: Ernesto.
Conditions around Ernesto remain a little ‘hostile’ and the forecast for the next 24 hours calls for only limited strengthening as Ernesto tracks to the west. But once the tropical storm moves into the eastern Caribbean, there is some suggestion that conditions will become more favorable for the system to strengthen. Indeed the National Hurricane Center (NHC) calls for Ernesto to reach hurricane strength by Monday.
Several long-range forecast models bring the storm into (or at least close to) the Gulf region sometime around the middle of next week. As we said yesterday, there’s no reason to get to worked-up about that just yet, but the weekend would be a great time to sit down and evaluate your “readiness” should a storm come calling on Louisiana at any time in the next few months!
No comments:
Post a Comment