Staying Hot, Isolated Storms

By Jay Grymes & Steve Caparotta

Titan9 Doppler was showing spotty showers on Monday afternoon, mainly over the coast parishes.  The “cool” front that we’ve been tracking for the past couple of days just doesn’t want to exit the southeastern parishes -- instead, it has been meandering to our east and south as a quasi-stationary front and appears likely to remain in the weather mix for another day or two.

Although we did get a mainly-dry day as expected, we did not get to enjoy the relief from the humidity that we had hoped for -- and it looks like that will be the story for Tuesday as well.  With the front still lingering in the region, we’ll see a slight dip in temps overnight tonight but not as much as thought.  Look for lows on Tuesday morning in the upper 60°s for metro Baton Rouge, but many communities just south of the Red Stick may not get out of the 70°s.

We’ll keep Tuesday’s forecast relatively dry, although this weather set-up suggests that we could again see a few showers and t-storms by Tuesday afternoon.  Fair to partly cloudy skies on Tuesday will mean plenty of sunshine, and that should help push daytime highs into the low 90°s for most WAFB neighborhoods.

For Wednesday, we’ll keep rain chances at 20% or less -- so most will stay dry.  But by Wednesday afternoon, our traditional summertime humidity will be back thanks to “return flow” (winds off the Gulf).  Heat, humidity and the flow off the Gulf will combine to bring rain chances back into the “scattered” category for Thursday and Friday.

In the meantime, forecast models continue to show that the area of low pressure currently over the southern Gulf could get a bit better organized as we head into the end of the work week.   At this point, chances for tropical development into a depression or tropical storm do not appear particularly high but it certainly deserves watching.  At this stage, whatever it becomes appears headed towards Florida.

As we head into the weekend, we are getting mixed signals as to what to expect.  The NWS Weather Prediction Center has another “cool” front moving into and through the lower Mississippi Valley on Saturday, with the boundary effectively dissipating as it reaches the coast.  For the time being, however, we’ll stick with a more traditional summertime forecast for Saturday and Sunday: hot-and-humid, with scattered afternoon t-showers.