Excessive Rains/Watching the Tropics – Louisiana’s Weekend
Louisiana's weekend will be affected by the weather, for the most part, those issues will come in the form of heavy rain but we do need to keep an eye on the tropics as well. The excessive rain threat has been classified as "slight" by the Weather Prediction Center. But that projection of heavier than usual downpours covers all but the extreme northwestern corner of the state.
As you can see on the graphic above this is not going to be the best weekend for outdoor activities even though in the Lafayette area there is a Luke Bryan concert on Friday night. Elsewhere there are countless high school football jamborees, and in Gueydan they're having the Duck Festival. It's a darn good thing ducks like the water, huh?
In case you're wondering "Excessive Rainfall" is less about the total amount of rain that fell and more about how much rain fell in a given period of time. An "Excessive Rainfall" notice is posted when forecasters believe rainfall rates will exceed a specific geographical area's ability to drain. That is certainly what we have experienced over the past several days in South Louisiana and it looks as if today and tomorrow we will get more of the same.
The tropical threat is not an imminent one by any stretch of the imagination but as we sit on the cusp of the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Laura's landfall near Lake Charles, which will be Saturday by the way, we should cast our eyes south and southeastward as the Tropical Atlantic Basin is beginning to show signs of life.
There are currently two weather systems classified as tropical waves the National Hurricane Center is watching. One is in the far eastern Atlantic, the other is located in the eastern Caribbean. Both systems could get stronger but the probability of that happening over the next five days is listed as slight.
The system in the Caribbean will be the one more closely monitored over the weekend as track models suggest it could turn northward and enter the southwestern Gulf of Mexico sometime next week.
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