Storms Remain Possible Overnight

By Jay Grymes & Steve Caparotta

Although most of the Baton Rouge metro area stayed dry today, we’ve seen some very active weather all around us.  A outflow boundary (a mini 'cool front' produced by earlier storms to our north) is moving through the WAFB region this afternoon and evening, and upper-level divergence (increasing winds aloft) has aided the lift and taken advantage of the warm, moist and unstable surface air, fueling the storms that have developed.

We’ve seen a handful of Severe T-Storm Warnings posted this afternoon for areas to the east, southeast and south of metro BR, with the storms generally moving to the southeast at 15-20 mph.

In addition, we’re getting some signals from short-term meteorological models, including our in-house “PrecisionCast” RPM, that we could see some additional showers and storms extending into the evening and overnight.  We’ll keep rain chances at about 30% through the night and early morning, with lows in the 70°s.  Don’t be surprised to be awakened tonight by rumbles of thunder!

We’re also maintaining that 30% rain chance through Friday afternoon -- not great news for the LSU Tigers and Oklahoma Sooners and the fans of the NCAA Super Regional, but it could be worse.  We’re not worried about an all-day rain, so they should be able to get the 6:00 PM game in even if they have to deal with a delay.

We’re posting 20% to 30% rain chances for Saturday and Sunday -- again, not ideal for the Super Regional schedule.  But it is summer in south Louisiana, and if you live here you know that this is just what summer is supposed to be like.

Monday looks like the day with the best rain chances over the upcoming 7 days, with a somewhat drier outlook for the remainder of next week.  Of course, drier often means warmer, and that’s just what we expect for Tuesday through Thursday next week:  lows in the low to mid 70°s, highs in the low 90°s and a humid air mass that makes the afternoons feel like the mid to upper 90°s.

As for T.S. Andrea ... she intensified more than expected last night and earlier today.  The 4PM NHC Advisory shows a tropical storm with peak sustained winds of 65 mph -- rather impressive for the first storm of the season and for a storm that looked poorly-organized and sheared just a day ago.  As expected, Andrea headed into Florida, making landfall along Florida’s “Big Bend” at 4:40 PM.  Andrea is expected to accelerate tonight and tomorrow, reaching the Carolinas by Friday afternoon and becoming ‘post-tropical’ by late Friday or early Saturday.  Andrea has produced some pockets of heavy rain and some wind damage in the Sunshine State and preliminary reports indicate ‘she’ has spawned a dozen tornadoes over the Florida peninsula.