Mid-Week Cold Front ... Great Looking Weekend!

Even with last night’s dew points dropping into the mid 50°s, the overnight clouds served as a blanket and actually helped warm the area after midnight. As a result, after slipping into the upper 50°s before midnight, sunrise temps for metro Baton Rouge had climbed back into the low 60°s. We spent most of today in-and-out of the clouds, reaching the 70°s before 10:00am and climbing into the mid to upper 70°s for the afternoon. And as expected, we did see a few blips on Titan9 Doppler, but the majority of WAFB neighborhoods remained dry throughout the day.

 

Our thinking hasn’t changed much from yesterday regarding the outlook over the next two days and into the weekend. Most of the WAFB area will remain in the 60°s tonight and into early Wednesday morning under mostly cloudy but generally rain-free skies. Temps will climb into the low 80°s for most of us on Wednesday afternoon, and we’ll stay with yesterday’s 30% rain chance in the Wednesday afternoon forecast.

But those rain probabilities will rise later into Wednesday evening and very early Thursday morning in response to the arrival of our next cold front. As we noted yesterday, this does not look like a very active front for the WAFB viewing area as the system’s main energy will track well to our north. For us, while we can’t entirely rule out a thunderstorm or two, no strong storms are anticipated as the front moves through and rainfall totals are likely to be on the light side for just about everyone -- we’re thinking most neighborhoods, if not all, will get less than one-half-inch of rain. In fact, both the American GFS and the European ECMWF models suggest that the front will weaken as it approaches and passes from northwest-to-southeast through our viewing area. 

 

For now, we’ll continue to carry rain chances at 60% (in the “likely” category) for late Wednesday evening in the early morning hours of Thursday, but we see no concern for severe weather or street flooding and by mid-day Thursday our skies should be clearing nicely.

Behind Thursday’s front, we’ll enjoy a surge of cool-and-less-humid air. Even with plenty of sunshine, highs for Thursday and Friday will top-out in the 60°s for many of WAFB’s northern communities and morning lows for Friday and Saturday will drop into the 40°s.

A warming trend will begin on Saturday afternoon, but for now it looks like we’ll enjoy another good looking November weekend with highs for Saturday and Sunday in the mid to upper 70°s.

 

In the tropics, the area in the central Caribbean that had piqued the interest of the NHC experts has essentially fallen apart. At present, the entire Atlantic Basin appears “scrubbed” of any potential tropical development.