Our forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday calls for highs in the 80°s and morning minimums in the low 60°s. But the bigger part of the weather story for the next few days is the increasing rain chances: we’re calling for scattered afternoon showers and storms for Tuesday and Wednesday with an even better chance of rain on Thursday as the Gulf Coast region’s next cool front slides by.
Titan9 Doppler picked up a few showers today, mainly over the coastal parishes. A relatively warm and moist low-level Gulf air mass is in place and will remain with us into Thursday as the flow persists off the Gulf. Daytime heating (and sunshine) will help the moderately unstable atmosphere kick-off scattered rains for the next two afternoons. In fact, our in-house RPM model has the look of a summer-like sea-breeze pattern setting-up for Tuesday afternoon.
In addition, the moist Gulf air will likely cool sufficiently during the pre-dawn hours for the onset of fog over the next couple of mornings. We’ll have to keep a close watch on early-morning air-temperature/dewpoint pairings. The air becomes “saturated” (100% relative humidity) when the air temp and the dewpoint become the same, and saturation encourages fog formation especially when the winds are light or calm. Another prolonged run at saturation during the early morning hours on either Tuesday or Wednesday could prompt the NWS to issue a Dense Fog Advisory like we saw earlier today. However, at this is not a major concern at this time, just something to be aware of.
A series of lows well to our north and northwest will continue to track from west-to-east in the coming days. By Wednesday, however, a storm system currently over the U.S. Northwest will push a cool front into the Southern Plains. The core of this mid-week storm system -- and the main concerns for severe weather -- will remain to our north, based on what we see right now. But the trailing cool front expected over the Southern Plains on Wednesday will track eastward from Thursday into the weekend.
The NWS Weather Prediction Center (WPC) has that front extending from the Great Lakes to the Texas Coast on Thursday morning and positioned just east of the southeastern coastal parishes by Friday morning. This set-up brings the boundary through the WAFB viewing area during the latter half of Thursday. We’re expecting a decent rain chance with Thursday’s front, in the form of showers and t-storms -- for the time being, we’ll go with a preliminary forecast for a 60% rain chance from the latter half of Thursday into the early hours on Friday.
In the extended outlook, we expect clearing skies during the day on Friday with a much cooler air mass in place. We’ll see how it shapes up in the coming days, but some of our early guidance is hinting at highs not even making the 70°s for many WAFB neighborhoods on Friday afternoon! And the weekend is looking pretty good right now – a fine Saturday and a mainly-dry Sunday with highs in the 70°s for both days.
No comments:
Post a Comment