Rain Likely on Thursday

By Jay Grymes & Steve Caparotta

March 25th WAFB First Alert Quickcast:

- gets wet for Thursday afternoon

- shaping up for a good looking weekend

We opened the day with areas of fog across the viewing area including a Dense Fog Advisory for parishes to our east and southeast.  Fortunately, most of the fog had cleared by mid-morning, leaving us with a fairly nice spring day.  A high deck of cirrus clouds through the afternoon kept us from enjoying an ‘A+’ beauty, but not enough clouds to really complain.

Look for a mild overnight as cloud cover increases, and many of us could be dealing with fog again in the morning.  But tomorrow’s weather story will be about the timing and amounts of rain.

Strong storms are prompting a Severe Weather Watch to our north today and this same system will be moving through Louisiana tomorrow afternoon.  But the way things look right now, we don’t anticipate a severe weather outbreak as the front rolls through.  There will be thunderstorms in the area on Thursday, and one or two could be on the strong side, but our current guidance is suggesting that we’ll not have the elevated instability and upper-level support that they have seen the past two days in the U.S. Plains.

Most of our models are currently showing modest rain totals with tomorrow’s front -- generally in the 0.25” to 0.50” range -- with one or two running a tad higher.  If you happen to get under one of the stronger storms tomorrow, your local total could get top one inch, but for most of us this won’t be a big problem.

As for the timing tomorrow, we’re thinking that the main activity will run from around noon through the afternoon, then winding down into the early evening.  So the morning drive will be dry, but plan on scattered rains during the evening Rush Hour commute.

We’ll start the day around 60° in the Capital City, with Thursday’s highs climbing into the low to mid 70°s for most WAFB neighborhoods.

Clouds will likely linger into Thursday night but skies will be clearing into Friday morning as a drier continental air mass takes hold.  It looks like a cool start for Friday with sun-up temperatures in the mid 40°s for the Red Stick … and it stays comfortably cool through the day too, with highs in the upper 60°s for many of us under sunny skies.

That sets us up for a great weekend: lots of sunshine on Saturday and Sunday with highs for both days in the 70°s -- make your plans now to take advantage of a superb spring weekend.

Our extended outlook sees showers slowly sneaking back into the forecast early next week.