Good-Looking Weekend Ahead!

By Jay Grymes & Steve Caparotta

WAFB First Alert Quickcast:

- warmer, stays dry through the weekend

- rain likely by the latter half of Monday

Some of you received a little sprinkle early this morning, with a handful of WAFB neighborhoods getting enough to register a couple of hundredths in the raingage (or rain gauge, if you prefer).  Those high clouds through the night carried just enough moisture down from the northwest to “wet the pavement” in some places before sunrise.

As expected, today was a day in-and-out of the clouds.  Those thicker early morning clouds not only dropped a few sprinkles in the area, but served as a warming blanket with sunrise temps in the mid to upper 40°s for many WAFB communities.  Through the day, periods of filtered sunshine between times when the skies were entirely overcast made for a not-so-pretty afternoon, but most of us still managed to get into the mid to upper 60°s during the afternoon.

The clouds stay with us tonight and linger into Saturday morning -- that’s why we’re keeping lows in the mid to upper 40°s for tomorrow’s sunrise.  We had been thinking that the winds would already have swung around, but now it looks like we won’t start getting flow off the Gulf until the latter part of Saturday.  But the morning clouds will thin and we should be under fair skies by mid-day with a mostly sunny afternoon.  That should warm the Red Stick to 70° or more by the mid-afternoon.

Skies will stay mainly clear Saturday evening into Sunday morning, with Baton Rouge area lows again in the mid to upper 40°s.  We’ll start Sunday under fair skies, going to partly cloudy by the mid to late afternoon with highs into the low 70°s for most WAFB neighborhoods.

Procrastinating shoppers will NOT be able to blame Mother Nature and the weather this weekend!

Finally, rain returns to the forecast on Monday as a cold front out of the Southern Plains moves into NW Louisiana on Monday morning and crosses the state through the day.  Unfortunately, many of you will be disappointed with the rain totals.  The early guidance is suggesting that most of us will receive less than 0.5” the way things look now, with many WAFB neighborhoods only getting 0.1” to 0.2” -- certainly not “drought denting” numbers.

The weather settles down by Tuesday morning, with moderately cooler air taking charge.  Our forecast is mainly dry through the mid-week, with our next chance for meaningful rain on Friday.