Meteorological Boredom Ahead

Boredom for me is good news for you, especially after the street flooding deluges some of us experienced on Saturday. Here’s an image showing yesterday’s rain totals where the narrow, colorful strips running through Slidell and Picayune received 6-8” and beach areas near Long Beach and Gulfport had 10”. Notice that areas in Western St. Tammany and Uptown New Orleans didn’t have it bad at all — it was that localized.

This new week ( actually two ) ahead will be really different — much more like what we see in late June: Hot, humid, with more sun than clouds. Models are forecasting only an inch of rain or less in an entire two-week period instead of a two-minute one! In fact, Monday looks dry and Tuesday might see one or two tiny, brief showers in the entire area. The reason is shown in this ECMWF forecast for Tuesday morning. We’re sitting under a broad surface ridge extending from the high over Western North Carolina through the Gulf Coast (blue dashed line). In the upper atmosphere, there are no waves in sight - just a big red dome of high pressure extending across the entire South. BUT this doesn’t necessarily mean bone dry conditions as I’ll explain in the next section.

The Foreca graphic looks good, but a few degrees cool with the high temperatures. A subtle change in upper air temperatures will encourage hot air to rising giving us a 20-30% chance of afternoon showers and thundershowers from Thursday through Saturday. The atmosphere near the ground is just so moist and the June heat is so intense, that it won’t take much. These showers mainly begin where the sea breeze runs out of steam close to interstates I-12 in Louisiana and I-10 in Mississippi and then slowly traipse inland Bet the first showers form over Buc-ee’s because of the heat rising off those Habanero Nugg-ees. Speaking about heat, 90 degrees should do it for the highs for most of us - average for mid-June.

Expect next week to give us a bit more rainfall than this week with those scattered afternoon storms. Next Wednesday and Thursday look to give us the better chance, yet I’m not expecting the multi-inch deluges because there’s no strong forcing. As we get to the last week of June, models keep indicating a hot and dry spell.

In the tropics, something could develop in the Bay of Campeche (that’s just west of the Yucatan) as early as this weekend. With the strong upper air ridge over us anything that forms there should go into Mexico south of the border. Again, this is not unusual for June and isn’t an indicator that the hurricane forecast will “bust”.

Foreca graphic for Pensacola Beach shows that visitors will enjoy this week. Lots of sun, winds die down, and highs in the mid- to upper-80s are reasons enough. Scattered thundershowers will be the only problem starting on Friday. Often, they form just inland from the beach and move even further away as the afternoon progresses.