Thursday was another in a strong of warm and mostly sunny days, but BIG changes are just around the calendar corner.
We’ll start Friday with another round of fog for the morning drive - - we could see a Dense Fog Advisory posted for some WAFB communities. Morning temps will start in the low 60°s for metro Baton Rouge under otherwise partly cloudy skies.
The clouds will continue to build through the day on Friday as our next cold front slides southward through the Bayou State. We’ve been talking about this all week: this will be a “mainly dry” frontal passage. We are currently posting only a 30% chance of rain for your backyard, and even if it does rain at your home or office, most of you will see less than one-tenth of an inch of rain with the frontal passage.
Yet the NWS is labeling this as a “strong” cold front. Why? Although we don’t anticipate much rain and no active or severe weather, the front will be delivering a much colder air mass in its wake. In fact, it currently looks like Sunday and Monday mornings will be the chilliest mornings of the season thus far, with many WAFB communities along and north of the I-10/12 corridor dipping into the 30°s!
Our extended forecast stays dry through at least mid-week, so the forecast for Halloween Ghosts and Goblins should be fine.
However, for those looking for a little rain for the fall gardens: you might want to pull out the hose!
In the tropics, Tony has been downgraded to a “post-tropical” system as he races off to the ENE. But the big tropical story deals with Category 2 Sandy. Sandy picked up ‘her’ forward speed today after exiting eastern Cuba early this morning. Sandy is moving through the Bahamas this afternoon and evening and will continue on a north to NNW track through the night and Friday. After that, Sandy -- still with hurricane intensity and likely growing in terms of its overall wind field -- is expected to turn to the NNE or NE on Saturday.
Normally, we would expect that turn to mark the end of any Atlantic Coast threat, but the extended forecast calls for Sandy to swing back to a north and then to the NW from Sunday through Tuesday.
The latest official National Hurricane Center forecast has a Category 1 Sandy located to the east of the Delmarva Peninsula by Monday afternoon, but taking the storm into either the mid-Atlantic states or southern New England on Tuesday. The status of Sandy at landfall is still a bit unclear: ‘she’ could still be a hurricane or may have transitioned to something “post-tropical” by landfall. But given her expected strength and size for this East Coast landfall scenario, everything points to the potential for a devastating ‘hit’ for sections of the densely populated coastal corridor.
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