Beautiful Cool Weather Week

Many cool mornings and warm afternoons this week with plenty of sun. Foreca graphic for Slidell captures this perfectly and should hold true for the entire Southeast Louisiana & Coastal MS area, but add about 3 or 4 deg to the colder lows for those of you on the Southshore.

Here’s just a few details to keep in mind:

1) Cold morning on Monday. 42 is about our average low for January, but this quickly warms to 72 by afternoon.

2) Gradual warm up through Wednesday where there’s a 20% chance of a brief evening sprinkle mainly on the Northshore and in South Mississippi.

3) Cool weather returns for Thursday and Friday with morning lows around 40 in most rural areas of St. Tammany, Harrison, and Hancock Counties. However, rural areas in Washington Parish and Pearl River County might get down to 37-39 with some isolated frost.

4) Warm up after than with a good chance of showers and storms next Sunday night or Monday Morning March 24.

5) Long-range outlook: Another brief two day cool down March 25 and 26, then a warmer than normal period from March 27 into the first few days of April. However, I still think April will average a bit below normal.

Alarms for a tornado warning sounded on cell phones throughout Western St. Tammany at about 4:15 PM yesterday. Doppler radar at the Hammond airport spotted an impressive swirl in a thunderstorm over the Lake and Parish deputies filmed a waterspout about to come ashore in Madisonville.

The blue arrow points to the swirl in the storm relative velocity over Madisonville at 4:18 PM. KHDC is the radar at Hammond Airport, the I-12 is the blue line and the symbol is placed at the St. Tammany - Tangipahoa Parish line shown in white.

The swirl tracked quickly NE in the Covington direction where downed trees were reported near the interstate and along Three Rivers and Wolverine Drive near the Tulane Primate Center and Northlake Christian. Fortunately, the circulation weakened before it reached downtown Covington. NWS meteorologists will probably take a look at the damage, but it sure seems like a small tornado that skipped along the tree tops.

The distinct couplet of colors at the swirl shows a clear circulation and I’m surprised that more damage was not reported. It certainly was more impressive on radar than what went through Slidell last year, yet the damage in Slidell last April was spectacular.

Moral of the story: Doppler radar shows velocities at several thousand feet. Many tornadoes don’t touch down but we should all take cover or have a safe place close by regardless of whether the warning has been based solely on radar. We were very lucky with the one yesterday.