Marvelous to Monsoonal to Just Moist

Anytime your summer highs stop in the mid 80s with lots of sun, a nice breeze, and tolerable humidity - it’s a real winner. But enjoy it this evening, because tomorrow will see more winds, clouds, and a few showers before storms move in for Saturday.

The culprit is a tropical wave heading in our direction from the Gulf as depicted in this US HRRR model forecast for 8 AM tomorrow. The blue dotted line shows the wave and the arrow the winds behind the wave and its general movement. You can see showers and storms streaming from the SE to the NW. Indeed, they move ashore along the MS Gulf Coast and the Slidell area in the mid-day hours, but die off quickly and seem quite reluctant to produce more than light amounts elsewhere. The system WILL NOT develop into a tropical storm because of wind shear. However, winds will gust to 25 mph especially near the water.

Saturday is a different story with much better shower and thunderstorm chances, an improving Sunday, with hot, humid, and mostly dry conditions for Monday - Wednesday of next week. Read on for details.

The Foreca graphic looks pretty good. Let’s pick it up Friday night where the showers and storms should persist after dark within 25 miles of the Pearl River - say Hancock, Pearl River Counties plus Eastern St. Tammany.

On Saturday, as our wave moves inland, the winds will die off and the rain coverage expands. Expect several periods of showers and storms throughout the day. Everyone will get an inch, many will get 2-3”, and few unlucky ones will see more. Friday’s heaviest amounts should be in the Slidell-Picayune-Bay St. Louis area, but the heaviest Saturday rains could well be in Western St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, and Washington Parishes.

As the remains of the wave approach I-20, high pressure will build in from the south giving us more like a 30-40% chance of showers with more sun and highs reaching the upper 80s. Monday — even less rain: Maybe a few light showers in Western St. Tammany, Tangipahoa and in the Kenner-River Parishes area. Nothing elsewhere. That pattern will hold through Wednesday with highs about 90 and plenty of sun.

I just finished watched a Bob Breck podcast and totally agree with him (except he went to Michigan; I went to Penn State - Go Lions! The best weather schools are Big 10). We’re both expecting most of the hurricane season to be a dud with maybe 8 or 9 named systems, 3 or 4 hurricanes, and 1 major. That’s well below average and less than what the National Weather Service is forecasting. Most of the storms will stay out to sea — just like last year. There’s two reasons for this. One, El Nino is already causing a lot of wind shear. This satellite image shows upper level winds from thunderstorms in the Eastern Pacific blowing east over the Caribbean (yellow arrows). The low level winds are shown in green. Bob is shown as himself.

The second reason is that the Bermuda High is sitting closer to the Azores - way off to the east. That’s what happened last year when all the storms moved around the high like the red arrow and only one piddly system effected the Gulf. Right now, a big dip in the jet stream over the East is keeping fronts and lows off the East Coast - unusual for early summer. All this is very unfavorable. So if anything were to impact us, it would have to come from the Gulf or just off Cancun. Which brings me to….

The fact that both GFS and ECMWF are trying to develop something in the Gulf or NW Caribbean anytime from June 10-14. However, they both disagree as to where and when the development would take place. All I can say right now is that will be a weakness there that makes development possible. If this were to head northward towards us or Texas, I’d expect more of a rain-maker (as if we need it) for three or four days in mid June followed by a dry late June. As Bob would say, it all depends on the Gulf

I see several stories in the NW Florida and Alabama beaches forecast. First, the winds will be up through Sunday making the surf too rough to swim. Monday - Friday the weather looks great. Concerning showers, there will be big east - west differences this weekend. The wave coming ashore over us will spread showers as far east as Gulf Shores Friday and Pensacola Saturday. However, I doubt the Destin area will see any of it. Rain chances go way down by Sunday afternoon.