The confidence is growing that there will be an outbreak of severe weather in Louisiana late Friday night and into early Saturday morning, as models continue to stay consistent and even come together with regards to the timing.
An "Enhance Risk" (a 3 on a scale of 5) is in place for portions of western and northern Acadiana, with eastern and southern Acadiana a step down in the "Slight Risk" zone for overnight Friday, the Enhanced Risk is pretty strong wording from the SPC and was last used during our severe outbreak back in December.
The two most reliable medium to long range models are in fairly good agreement, with only a few minor differences in the timing of the system and where the focus of the heaviest showers will be along the front.
As of Wednesday it looks like the system will start to produce isolated thunderstorms ahead of the front around midnight which will need to be watched closely as they will have the ability to become severe storms.
Those isolated storms will be in an environment that will allow them to rotate so super-cell development will be likely and the radar will need to be monitored for the development of tornadoes.
The above model is the EURO which has remained very consistent run to run, with the exception of a slight speed up moving the front through during the early morning hours of Saturday as opposed to after sunrise.
The GFS is almost identical although an hour or two faster and slides the focus of the stronger storms slightly to the south, this would mean a larger impact for Acadiana so we'll need to watch how that trends over the next two days.
This set up is going to mean we need to look out for all modes of severe weather: hail, severe weather, and even tornadoes.
Make sure that you have a reliable way to receive your weather warnings and that they are set up to wake you up if one is issued for your area.
While it is very inconvenient to be woken up by weather warnings, not knowing could be even worse, and the timing of this event means many people will already be asleep and in bed.
As we've already seen this week there's going to be minor changes to the forecast between now and Friday so make sure you stay up to date with all the latest information.
