Flash Flood Watch into Tuesday

By Jay Grymes & Steve Caparotta

April 13th WAFB First Alert Quickcast:

- FLASH FLOOD WATCH remains in effect for much of the WAFB viewing area
- “wet” pattern persists just about all week

The NWS tweaked the coverage of the FLASH FLOOD WATCH early this morning, adding several of WAFB’s parishes to the mix early this morning.  The WATCH currently remains in effect for the majority of the viewing area through Tuesday evening, and we would not be surprised to see the WATCH extended into the week given our “rain likely” forecast for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Today was a veritable “Tale of Two Cities” in terms of our weather: a wet and gloomy start to Monday but some sunshine and even a soft breeze for the afternoon to make up for the morning.  Unfortunately, the good stuff doesn’t last long …

Clouds will be on the return overnight with spotty to isolated showers likely for Tuesday’s morning commute.  But fog may even be a bigger player for the morning drive, at least in some locations.  We’ll start the day in the upper 60°s to near 70° for the Capital City.  Tuesday’s highs will top-out in the upper 70°s for many of us as a cloudy and wet day takes shape -- we’re going with rain chances at 80% for Tuesday.  While it may not be an all-day rain, the current set-up looks very wet through the middle of the day with the rains settling down by the evening.

Sadly, “wet” is the operative word over the next several days, at least. We're posting rain chances at 70% for Wednesday and Thursday and still at 50% to 60% for Friday.  Even the weekend outlook currently includes scattered showers and t-storms for both days.  Our temperature forecasts through the week call for highs in the upper 70°s to low 80°s with morning minimums in the 60°s -- that means daily average temperatures near- to above-normal each day.

That run of rainy days also means a threat of nuisance flooding and may even cause some issues on local bayous and rivers.  Two of our popular long-range forecast tools -- the American GFS and the European models -- are indicating widespread rain totals of 4” to 5” or more between now and next Sunday evening.

For the time being, we are not too concerned about a severe weather threat over the coming days, but even that will need close watching as waves of rain move through the region this week.