A Wild Weather Sunday

Sunday started off with some severe weather rolling through Iberville and Ascension Parishes.  A Severe T-Storm Warning was issued by the National Weather Service around 5:30 AM Sunday morning as a storm dropped hail and brought damaging winds to the area.

Picture from Facebook page post earlier today.

Notice the pink shade in the radar reflectivity in the above image.  Radar returns will run "hot" so to speak when the beam hits frozen precipitation.  Often times a hail pocket is represented by brighter colors on traditional radar.  Titan 9 Radar can see inside the storm and began seeing some very large estimated hail sizes.

The Titan 9 hail size detection was estimating golf ball sized hail moving through north Ascension Parish.  Here are some viewer submitted pictures of hail in the area:

Half Dollar sized hail in Dutchtown (photo courtesy: Angela Eiseman)

Various shaped hailstones in Dutchtown (photo courtesy: Robin McDonald)

1 1/2" Hail (photos courtesy: Melissa Landry)

But we are not out of the woods just yet in terms of t-storms today.  Another cluster of t-storms will be impacting metro Baton Rouge around 10-11 AM.

This cluster of storms will once again contain some possible hail and very heavy rain at times.  The good news is that after this next pass of storms things should begin to wind down as we move into the afternoon hours.  A few sct'd rain showers can't be ruled out, but the stronger storm threat will end.

The area remains under a Flash Flood Watch until 4 PM today.  The threat for more heavy rain doesn't really help much in terms of area rivers.  Many are already high from rains late Friday.

The Comite River at Joor Road is currently 7 feet below flood stage.  After the next round of heavy rain passes we should see another spike back up towards the 20 foot level flood stage.  At this time we feel the Comite will stay below flood stage even with additional rain from today.

The Amite at Denham Springs may be a different story.  The river is already 1 foot above flood stage at 30.1 feet.  The river is still expected to rise another foot before cresting around 31 feet.  The additional rain today will keep the Amite River above flood stage for at least a few days.  Areas down river near Bayou Manchac Point will have to watch as the river looks to maybe reach flood stage there.  Other areas near Port Vincent, French Settlement, and Maurepas look to be okay as of now.