KATC StormTeam 3 Weather BLOG

We are still on track for a significant severe weather threat for Acadiana Sunday and Sunday night.  The Storm Prediction Center has all of Acadiana hatched in for a slight risk of severe weather but this may get upgraded to a moderate risk depending on the evolution of our next storm system.  Although the dynamics with this weather system don’t appear as phased as they did yesterday, there are plenty of ingredients for a significant threat of tornadic/wind damaging thunderstorms Sunday afternoon into the evening hours.  I believe our in house Futurecast Model is beginning to capture the possibility of some scattered storms developing earlier Sunday as a warm front lifts to the north ahead of the main storm system.  So there may be a severe weather risk earlier in the day but this feature is far from certain, yet possible…Many of our higher-end severe weather events start this way with scattered rotating storms, and they usually get cooking here and get very nasty north and east of Acadiana.  Our models are also going for temperatures in the lower 80s Sunday afternoon which will add to our instability when the strongest jet-dynamics and atmospheric spin arrives.  Best chance of rain and storms will arrive either in the latter part of the afternoon and/or into the evening hours.  Interestingly enough there appears to be multiple upper disturbances that will “dumb-bell” around one another making timing of the greatest risk of severe storms difficult, but this event may last well into the late night.  It’s also unclear where the surface lows will develop with this system, but anywhere close and to and to the east or southeast of these lows there will likely be long-lived damaging tornado potential, especially across northern Losuiaiana, Arkansas and Mississippi.  The bottom line for us in Acadiana, expect windy and unstable conditions for Easter Sunday with excellent probabilities of one or more tornado watches for Sunday and Sunday night.  Have a happy and safe Easter weekend and know we’ll be watching it very closely and hopefully you’ll do the same with us.  Rob