More Rain This Weekend

By Jay Grymes & Steve Caparotta

April 10th WAFB First Alert Quickcast:

- scattered rains into the evening
- more rain this weekend

The rains arrived in the afternoon as expected, washing-out hopes for “Live After Five” and making for an added headache for the Friday evening drive home. The weather turned a bit active in the Baton Rouge metro area a little after 1:00pm with a Severe T-Storm Warning posted for an area east of downtown Baton Rouge. Fortunately, however, the action subsided a bit into the later afternoon hours but we are still keenly watching another wave of rains heading this way from the southwestern parishes.

The cold front responsible for this afternoon’s weather will slide south of metro Baton Rouge this evening but then stall near/along the coast overnight and into Saturday morning. We’ll feel the wind shift and see temps drop into the low to mid 60°s across much of the WAFB viewing area. However, with the front in close proximity through the night, we will keep isolated showers in the overnight and early morning forecast for most of the WAFB area, with scattered rains possible along the coast.

So for many of us, Saturday will start out without rain. There may be some pockets of fog, especially near waterbodies and in those usual suspect spots, but we think that the air will be a little too dry for widespread fog issues -- with the possible exception of the coastal margins. But through the day, the front will begin a northward retreat as a warm front, allowing a return of moist-and-unstable Gulf air into the area and resulting in a return of scattered-to-likely showers and t-storms by the afternoon and early evening.

And for the time being, we’re keeping rain chances in the “scattered-to-likely” categories for Sunday too -- all in all, a relatively wet weekend outlook. We’ve got highs for Saturday and Sunday running around 80° to the low 80°s for both days.

Look for two-day rain totals over the weekend on the order of about 1” on average for the area, with locally higher and lower totals. We’re not particularly concerned about a severe weather outbreak on either day, although we can’t rule out one or two warnings over the weekend given the nature of the unstable air that will be in place.

The outlook for next week doesn’t seem to get much drier either. Our extended guidance is showing a series of passing disturbances through the week including two frontal passages: one around mid-week and another closer to the end of the work week. That all adds up to a continued “unsettled” weather pattern that keeps things damp-to-wet into Friday.

Not everyone gets rain every day, but over the course of the next seven days we could easily see widespread rain totals of 3” to 4” with locally-higher totals based on the current extended-range guidance from the NWS Weather Prediction Center.

So stay dry .. get outside when you can .. and enjoy the weekend!