Warmer, More Humid into the Weekend

By Jay Grymes & Steve Caparotta

WAFB Storm Team QuickCast:

- slight rise in temps and humidity Friday & Saturday but stays dry

- iso’d PM showers for Sunday

- weather gets active on Monday

Wednesday was a second consecutive spring beauty across south Louisiana ... too bad we can’t have of month of this!

The winds have come around and are blowing out of the south as of this afternoon, bringing Gulf moisture into the state.  Dew points will be slow to rise, but rise they will and that means a slightly warmer night tonight with partly cloudy skies ... and a Friday afternoon that will ‘feel’ warmer not just because of a slight rise in temperature (about 2° or so) but also due to the added humidity.  It won’t be uncomfortable, just not as nice as yesterday and today.

Looking Good for Saturday Events!

We’ll stay with partly cloudy skies for Saturday too, with highs reaching the low 80°s for many WAFB communities.  Should be a fine day for anything outdoors: yard work, festivals, some fun, or just swinging in the hammock! 

So it’s looking just fine for the Baton Rouge Blues Festival in downtown BR and for the EBR Master Gardeners' Plant Sale out at the LSU-Burden Plantation on Essen Lane – both on Saturday.  And our friends in Ponchatoula are having their three-day Strawberry Festival, beginning on Friday afternoon!

Sunday looks pretty good too, although we do throw in a 20% chance of rain for the latter half of the day.   The isolated showers will be the prelude to what is shaping up to be a busy Monday weatherwise.

Showers & T-Storms by Monday

A cold front will push across the Bayou State on Monday and we’re calling for “rain likely” in the WAFB area during the day and into the evening.  Yesterday we mentioned to potential for active-to-severe weather as the front crosses Louisiana and today the NWS Storm Prediction Center has delivered a preliminary confirmation for that threat.  We’ll still need to wait a day or two to assess the total threat -- so check in with us through the weekend as we get a better bead on the timing of the most active weather as well as the types of weather threats that might develop.

We could see a few lingering showers early on Tuesday but the skies should clear by noon, with a nice Wednesday on the way.

Hurricane Season Outlook

And for something completely different … the Colorado State University tropical forecasters issued their April pre-season forecast for the coming hurricane season.  Their outlook calls for a below-average number of storms: 9 ‘named’ storms and 3 hurricanes of which one will be a major hurricane.  The below-average outlook seems to be a general consensus coming from a number of experts in the field.