Entire State at Risk – Louisiana Bracing for Torrential Downpours

If you spent more than a few summer days in Louisiana in the past you probably know the drill as far as our "typical" summer weather pattern is concerned.  People in Lafayette, New Iberia, Lake Charles, and even Shreveport and Monroe in northern Louisiana understand "partly cloudy, hot and humid, the chance of a thunderstorm in the afternoon".

And while technically our weather forecast for the next several days does include all of those elements it's the threat of rain and more importantly tropical downpours that has a lot of us becoming overly concerned when the skies begin to darken. You see our typical rain threat/coverage is about 40%. Today forecasters have the rain threat listed at 80%. It will be 90% on Saturday. And, rain chances are forecast to be 90% on Sunday too.

The above graphic is from the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Lake Charles so you can see the area is expecting a lot more rain than we might normally expect for this time of year.

Speaking of rainfall, it's not really the amount of rain that is falling that is posing the bigger problems. It's how much rain is falling in a short period of time. That's what the National Weather Service calls an "Excessive Rainfall Event".  Basically, rainfall rates are higher than a particular area's ability to drain. Excessive rain events usually lead to street flooding and some flash flooding. That's the main concern for the region through the weekend.

As of early this morning (0200 a.m.) National Weather Service radars were showing very little precipitation in Louisiana. There were some very heavy thunderstorms in southeastern and east central Texas though. Those storms appeared to be moving in the general direction of Louisiana but most of the individual storm cells were moving from southwest to northeast.

If you have airline connections in Houston, Texas this morning you might want to double-check with your air carrier to make sure your flight has not been affected by what appear to be some very strong storms in the Houston area at this hour.