re: Snow Tease for Baton Rouge (Saturday) UPDATE (1/20)

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Whats the latest for BR and surrounding areas. Appreciate it, have a nice day

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uncertainty regarding how far inland precip pushes overnight and exactly when dry air will push the precip out

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exactly when dry air will push the precip out

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dry air will push the precip out

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dry air

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Models are converging on a low impact solution. Maybe a light frosting but totals look to be under 0.1"

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Supposed to be going to see a band at the Hollywood Casino in Bay St. Louis on Friday night. Wonder if all this will be gone and melted by then. Concern is crossing the twin spans and into MS and down. Southshore NOLA looks to be ok.

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Meteorologist Nick Mikulas
Once again, the elusive entity known as the winter storm appears to be dodging most of Louisiana. I’d put chances at less than 10% that we see anything wintry at my house in Alexandria, but keep chances in the 30-40% range down along I-10 for some light freezing rain, or perhaps a little sleet. That’s still front page news down this way, but it doesn’t look like a destructive ice storm at this point. It’ll still be very cold Thursday and Friday, with temperatures in the 30s during the daylight hours, and wind gusting over 20 mph. That means wind chills in the teens and 20s, with a couple hard freezes likely.

As the wintry mix threat shrinks, the threat for severe weather is ticking up a bit. This still doesn’t look like an outbreak, but models are showing a bit earlier start, and the potential for individual cells and supercells to develop, starting around 3:00 PM. This is a different set up than usual. We usually have a ton of moisture, and very low cloud bases. It’s why you rarely see storm structure, or a tornado as it happens in Louisiana. The low level moisture won’t be nearly as significant as it usually is, which will serve a couple purposes. First, lower moisture at the surface means lower instability. There will still be enough instability, but it won’t be off the charts. Dry air near the surface also allows downdrafts to accelerate. That means damaging straight line wind will be possible with any supercell that manages to develop.

What this all adds up to is an earlier severe threat. On the bright side, that means we shouldn’t be dealing with a middle of the night problem. It seems 3:00 PM until 11:00 PM is going to be our prime time for problems, with 3:00 PM until 8:00 PM being our best chance for severe weather. Then everything kind of forms into a big blob of rain and thunder. SPC now has us in a slight risk, or level 2 of 5 risk for severe weather. Even with the moisture not being incredibly rich, several hours of thunderstorms means most will see 1-2 inches of rain, and it’s possible that isolated areas will see 4+ inches. We should be able to handle that much rain, but some street flooding is possible, and any creeks that flood easily may rise pretty quickly. All modes of severe weather are possible, but the most widespread concern is straight line wind. There may be a tornado or two, and as I’ve said a million times, (common sense alert) it only takes one. Hail is possible, but this set up would favor more pea to nickel sized hail than anything huge.

I’ll be on radar watch this afternoon and evening, and will update if any sort of wintry threat tries to slip back in. For now, the severe concern is much higher on my watch list than anything wintry. I’ll keep you posted!

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