A Wet Saturday Morning Ahead!

For the vast majority of us, it would be a stretch to even label what fell this morning as light rain or drizzle-- how about occasional spritzes? There were a couple of pockets of light-to-moderate showers through the day, but for most of us, there was little need for the windshield wipers.

The cold front moved through the metro area in the early morning hours and was already draped along the southeast Louisiana coast by 10:00am. The front will continue to ease its way into the coastal waters this evening, then stalls and begins to retreat northward on Friday.

We saw a few breaks in the afternoon’s cloud deck, but early afternoon highs only reached the mid 70°s for metro Baton Rouge as the mostly-cloudy skies and inflow of cool-and-dry air from the north limiting the daytime warming. In fact, some WAFB neighborhoods struggled just to briefly climb out of the 60s!

We expect partly to mostly cloudy skies through the night and into Friday morning, but the cool air from the northwest will allow many WAFB communities to slip into the mid 50s for Friday’s start. And while we expect to remain under mostly cloudy for most, if not all, of the day on Friday, we’re keeping rain chances on the very low side at 20% or below for the afternoon and evening. Look for Friday’s highs to return to the mid to upper 70s, but the “dry” air that has been filtering into the region today will mean an even less-humid afternoon, with very comfortable fall-like dew points in the 50°s.

 

So what about that weekend outlook?

If you remember, we’ve been talking about pretty high rain chances for Saturday just about all week long. Remember, the front that moved through this morning will be headed back this way late Friday into early Saturday. At the same time, a cold front will be approaching from the northwest and headed into the WAFB viewing area for Saturday morning.

That double-barrel set-up means “rain likely” for Saturday -- some neighborhoods could see between one-half-inch and one-inch of rain or more thanks to a “wet” Saturday morning. But the forecast for the latter half of Saturday continues to show some improvement -- in other words, we are becoming more confident that Saturday’s morning rains will be winding wind down and potentially coming to an end through the second half of the day.

 

The cold front from the northwest looks like it should have enough momentum to maintain its southeasterly progress and sweep things out of southeast Louisiana during Saturday afternoon. For now, we do suggest that you have a “Plan B” ready for any Saturday afternoon outdoor activities as a “just in case,” but we are very optimistic that the weather clears for our WAFB communities from north-to-south through Saturday afternoon and evening.

 

And with that Canadian front pushing through on Saturday, Sunday should be a nice autumn day, with highs in the mid 70°s.

Signals are still a bit mixed for next Monday and Tuesday, but we’re thinking that Monday should be another fairly nice autumn day before the next front approaches from the northwest. We’ll add in a slight chance of rain for late Monday and a 50-50 or better rain chance for the front’s passage on Tuesday. Like our Saturday front, we expect Tuesday’s front to have more than enough “push” behind it to move through fairly quickly and leave us with a nice Wednesday and rest of the work week!

 

Elsewhere . . . nothing in the tropics to worry about!