Given our rather cool, cloudy and damp start to 2013, today’s sunshine was a welcomed sight! But you’ve probably already noticed that today’s blue skies were short-lived: the clouds are moving in from the west and will continue to “thicken” into the night.
Yep -- keep the umbrella within reach, just about all week long!
We’ll start off Tuesday under the clouds but dry ... and not quite as cool as Monday’s start for the kids at the morning bus-stop with sunrise temps on Tuesday in the mid 40°s around metro Baton Rouge. Tuesday afternoon will be a bit warmer as well, with highs expected to reach the upper 60°s for many WAFB neighborhoods. But during the afternoon, especially the latter half of the afternoon, we expect rains to start moving in from the southwest and west. It looks like scattered showers and maybe a few rumbles of thunder for the Tuesday evening commute.
By Tuesday night into the early hours Wednesday, just about everyone gets wet again. But the warm-up continues as a warm front lifts northward from the Gulf.
An upper-level storm system over northern Mexico will help strengthen a developing surface low pressure system over south Texas. The warm front that slides through the viewing area from late Tuesday into early Wednesday will be tied to that Texas low ... as will a trailing cold front.
But this Texas storm complex will be a bit of a slow-mover, with the low still to our west late Wednesday into the early hours Thursday. We will be in the “warm sector” ahead of the system, and that should help take highs on Wednesday into the 70°s. We’re thinking that the rains will taper off a bit by Wednesday afternoon and into the evening hours, with much of the area remaining mainly dry into early Thursday.
By Thursday morning, with the surface low to our northwest and moving north, the forecast calls for the system’s cold front to begin its advance to the east. This set-up over the next couple of days offers the potential for some energetic storms, prompting the NWS Storm Prediction Center to post a “Slight Risk” for severe weather across most of the WAFB viewing area from mid to late Wednesday into early Thursday. (We’ll have to see if that threat is extended into the middle of the day on Thursday.)
With this slow-moving system and a very “juicy” atmosphere, the bigger threat may well be the potential for a serious rain event over the coming days. While it looks like the heaviest regional rains will stay to the west of the Atchafalaya Basin, we can’t rule out some 2” to 3” rains across our viewing area, with localized totals possibly going even higher. Thankfully, most of the area rivers and bayous are in decent shape for handling a big rain event as long as areal averages don’t get too large!
Most of us will get another brief break from the rains on Friday, but our current weekend outlook has rain returning, especially for Sunday!
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