Acadiana Forecast Calls for Another Wet Week
It is shaping up to be deja vu all over again. You might recall a couple of weeks ago when several locations in South Louisiana were inundated with extremely heavy rainfall. Rainfall amounts of six, seven, even ten inches or more were common across many parts of the region as a result of those thunderstorms. To make matters worse, even more, rain fell on the saturated ground in the days following that deluge. We could be setting up for a similar storm track situation this week.
As things stand right now a large thunderstorm complex is bringing heavy rains to portions of eastern and southeastern Texas this morning. This area of moisture and associated showers and storms will likely be moving to the east over the next several hours. Then, it appears as if the rainmaking knobs will get stuck in the "on position" right over the northern Gulf coast.
The scenario this week is setting up to be very similar to the weather pattern of two weeks ago. There is a high-pressure center located off to our east. Back to the west is a low-pressure center. The rotation around these features is creating a huge funnel of moisture that is being dragged out of the Gulf of Mexico and directly over the state of Louisiana. That plume of moisture is represented quite nicely by the red-shaded area on the graphic above.
Forecasters do not anticipate a huge rain event with this storm system. However, there will be localized amounts of rainfall that could cause street flooding or localized flash flooding in and around some of the heavier showers and storms.
Over the next several days we could see accumulations of a few inches of rainfall but for the most part, the showers and storms will only drop a tenth of an inch of rain up to a quarter of an inch of rainfall per day. But we will carry a rain threat with us through the end of the week and into the weekend.
This doesn't mean we can rule out a threat of severe weather even though the Storm Prediction Center is not forecasting that for South Louisiana. There is a marginal risk of severe storms in Central and Northern Louisiana later today. And we can't rule out the formation of some tropical funnel clouds in some of these storms as well.
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