Beautiful Day Ahead on Wednesday!

By Jay Grymes & Steve Caparotta

WAFB First Alert QuickCast:

- front moves through the region later this evening

- clearing and much less humid for Wednesday

- rains return for the latter half of the week

The ‘cool’ front we’ve been talking about for the last several days is still on track to arrive in the viewing area later this evening and makes its way south and into the coastal waters tonight and into Wednesday morning.  

And of course, the rains will make for a messy evening commute.  However, once the front moves through, we’ll get a nice break from the normal summer humidity.  Too bad the respite will be rather short.

We’ll keep isolated showers in the overnight forecast, mainly due to rains along the coast as the front sags south over the northern Gulf.  By Wednesday morning, skies should be clearing nicely for the Red Stick with morning lows in the upper 60°s for the northern half of the WAFB viewing area.  Mostly sunny skies will mean Wednesday afternoon highs up near 90° for many of us, but the ‘continental’ air mass in place will mean dew points in the low to mid 60°s for many of us tomorrow.  For south Louisiana, that is unusually ‘dry’ air and should make for a fairly comfortable day by July standards, even with those summer-like highs.

Much -- maybe even most -- of the WAFB viewing area will visit the 60°s once again for Thursday morning, but during the day the front will display a steady northward retreat.  By Thursday afternoon and evening, our typical humid Gulf air mass will be back in place.  In fact, we’ll even add in a slight rain chances -- at 20% to 30% -- for Thursday afternoon and evening as the unstable Gulf air displaces the drier air from the north.

Our forecast turns especially wet for Friday and the weekend: we’re going with rain likely for all three days.  What’s more, while we’re not calling for day-long rains over the three-day period, these won’t be ‘afternoon-only” rainy days either.  Although the majority of the rains will be during the latter half of the day, showers are likely to start popping up well before the lunch hour on all three days.

After a somewhat early start to the 2014 Hurricane Season -- thanks to Arthur on July 1st – all has remained “quiet” in the tropics since ... and there are no suspect areas for potential development through the next three to five days, at least.