Strong Storms Pummeling Louisiana This Morning

Most of southwestern Louisiana has been under severe weather watches and warnings in the early morning hours. It looks as if those watches and warnings might need to be extended to other parts of the state as a particularly large and strong band of thunderstorms is pushing through Louisiana this morning.

The National Weather Service Forecast Office out of Lake Charles, Louisiana is reporting that Acadia, Allen, Beauregard, Calcasieu, Cameron, Jefferson Davis, Vermilion, Vernon, and Lafayette Parishes are under a severe thunderstorm watch until 5 this morning. Many of those parishes have been under or could likely be placed under severe thunderstorm warnings in the next few hours as the strong band of storms rumbles through.

That is a capture from the Lake Charles radar scan as of 0200 this morning. As you can see there is a bowed line of strong storms extending from just west of Alexandria southward through Lake Charles. The bow shape indicated by radar suggests the storm system contains gusty winds. There have also been reports of small hail associated with some of these storms as they moved through southeastern Texas.

Based on the timing and trajectory of the storm's movement the heaviest weather should be moving into the Lafayette area by 5 am. The strong storms and heavy rain should be fairly short-lived as the band of rain is not that wide and it is moving at a fairly rapid pace.

There is another area of showers and storms that's about two hundred miles further to the west of the line of storms that are moving through Louisiana this morning. This should keep rain chances in South Louisiana fairly high for at least the morning hours. The official forecast from NWS suggests the heaviest rain will move out of the Lafayette area by 1 pm.

This should mean a rather quiet night tonight and a nice day on Friday. However, rain chances are expected to ramp back up on Saturday with a 50% chance of rain and thunderstorms during the day and extending into the evening hours. Sunday's forecast looks to be mostly sunny and mild.