Little Change This Week...

By Jay Grymes & Steve Caparotta

WAFB First Alert Quickcast:

- maintaining that summertime ‘fell’ through the week

- watching T.S. Dolly head towards Mexico

Taking care of the tropics first . . . T.S. Dolly continues to head towards The Mexican Gulf Coast and should make landfall sometime overnight or early in the morning.  Dolly could intensify a bit before landfall, but the forecast keeps ‘her’ as a moderate tropical storm when ‘she’ cross the coastline.  Dolly is the first ‘named’ storm of the 2014 season for the Gulf of Mexico ... and the first ‘named’ storm of 2014 not to reach hurricane strength.  Elsewhere in the Atlantic Basin, there are no areas of immediate concern.

Back closer to home, it may be a new month but it still feels like summer.  But remember, it is supposed to, especially in the Deep South.  Summer doesn’t officially end for almost another three weeks (on Sep 22), and it is not rare to have some hot days in the first half of the month.  In fact, the longest consecutive stretch of 100° days for Baton Rouge occurred from August 20 to September 5 (7 days) back in 2000 - - there is no other run of more than 4 consecutive days at 100° or more, at least since 1930.

We’re not expecting much of a chance in our outlook for the rest of the week and into the weekend.  If anything, it may get a little ‘wetter’ than what we saw today.  We’re going with rain chances at around 40% t0 50% each day right into next Monday - - with most of the rain being the summertime afternoon variety.  And in keeping with the summer season, morning lows wil be in the low to mid 70°s for the Red Stick with afternoon highs in the low 90°s.

Bottom line: no relief from the summer heat just yet.

But this is a transition month -- no doubt about it – as Baton Rouge normals take a big step down during the four week period.  While normal highs at the start of September are in the low 90°s, they drop to the mid 80°s by month’s end.  And the daily low normals slip from summer-like low 70°s down to comfortable mid 60°s.  Yet maybe the biggest weather story in most Septembers is the welcomed arrival of the first real autumn front.  (Okay, that is the biggest September weather story as long as the tropics are behaving.)

So keep the A/C on high for now .. and with some weather luck, we’ll have a run of days in the coming months when we can shut it off and open the windows!