re: Tornado! Outbreak Underway New PDS Watch for South LA, MS, & AL

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but there’s a huge difference between that and the solid red snake-like line from north to south bowing out.

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Meteorologist Nick Mikulas
Everything remains on schedule for an active severe weather day/night across the entire area, and all of Louisiana. Things will rapidly change as a warm front lifts northward across the area by early this afternoon. South of this front, severe thunderstorms will be possible as soon as 2:00 PM. These will likely be isolated, but will have severe potential as soon as they fire up. Storms will become more widespread after 6:00 PM, and between 6:00 PM and 3:00 AM is when we will have our most widespread threat for severe weather. Due to the isolated nature of some of these storms, they could become supercells, with damaging wind, and isolated tornadoes being the main threat. The key word there is isolated. I do think there will be a few tornadoes in the state. The key will be keeping those out over open land, away from people, which is of course well above my pay grade. But the main message here is that there is the potential for dangerous storms. Even with that potential, the chances you are impacted by a tornado in a given event is quite low. SPC has included a 10% risk for strong tornadoes in our area, which means there is a 10% chance of a strong tornado within 25 miles of a point in the hatched area on the map. I roughly equate that to a 1/10 chance of a strong tornado impacting a given parish in the threat zone, which is actually probably a bit higher than reality, but is a simple way to communicate the risk. Remember, a parish covers a lot of ground, and tornadoes are very small an isolated relative to the size of an entire parish. Basically, be ready, but don’t think I’m saying you’ll see a tornado at your house today. Just be alert, and ready to react if need be.

Rain totals are forecast to be in the 1-4 inch range, with isolated higher totals. The flood watch that was issued yesterday for Rapides, Avoyelles, Allen, Evangeline, and St. Landry Parish remains in place. Rain will linger behind the front into late morning or even early afternoon Wednesday in parts of the area. The severe threat should clear most of the area by 3:00 AM, but Avoyelles and St. Landry Parish could stay in the threat zone through 9:00 AM Wednesday as the warm front tries to nudge back to the north before the cold air finally takes over.

Hopefully this system makes it through the area with less issue than forecast, because we switch into winter mode after this. Single model runs are entirely useless after 5-6 days out so please, always ignore them. I’m watching ensemble trends, and like I said a couple days ago, there will be at least a couple close calls regarding wintry stuff. The core of the coldest air should be overhead around Christmas, and while any chance of some sort of Christmas miracle is always quite low, the set up in the 12-23 to 12-26 range is as favorable as it gets for some *low* winter potential in that timeframe. That basically means that instead of a 0.1% chance, there is probably like a 5% chance. Not bad, but we live in Louisiana, and ice or snow is quite tough to get. I’m heading down to watch the Cheek family do some singing in the bustling metropolis of Big Cane, but will be back to babysit radar early this afternoon.

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I just hope it ends before dinner time. Our retired neighbors and us are all going to dinner.

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Aspercel

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Is there anything gayer than a warm front?

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tBoat

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