Tropical Storm Cristobal made landfall on the Mexican coast on Wednesday, and what happens over the next 24 hours will go a long way in determining the outcome of this storm.
Before I get to deep into the forecast I'll stress once more that there is still plenty of uncertainty with this storm regarding specific impacts, the influence of land can often be unpredictable and we won't get a clearer picture until it moves out over the Gulf of Mexico.
That being said we are seeing some consistency in regards to the track of the storm which has continued to show a Louisiana landfall late this weekend and early next week.
Cristobal has weakened slightly since it made landfall now with winds down to around 40 mph, although has been able to hold on to tropical storm strength a little longer than expected.
It's moving at a snails pace to the south east and we should start to see it turn north again and out into the Gulf of Mexico by the end of the day on Friday before increasing speed on Saturday.
The National Hurricane Center still has the storm making landfall around Vermilion Bay (slightly east) overnight Sunday into early Monday morning as a strong tropical storm with winds at 60 mph.
There are a few things working in our favor, starting with a considerable amount of dry air that is going to be working against the storm and could hurt it in it's efforts to intensify.
Again the full extent of the impacts of that dry air won't really be seen until we get an idea what kind of structure the storm has coming off the Yucutan Peninsula Friday night, a more raggedy looking storm will have a higher likelihood of being impacted by that dry air as it pushes into the center.
This dry air will help prevent the storm from rapidly intensifying, and while there is a forecast for intensification this region of dry air should put a cap on the overall strength of the storm.
That being said it is still expected to be a strong tropical storm when it arrives along the central Gulf Coast.
It seems increasingly likely that Acadiana will see some sort of impacts from this storm, the problem remains how significant those impacts will be and when exactly they will start to arrive.
As of Thursday morning the best guess would be an increase in the tides on Sunday afternoon with the water starting to come up, and breezy conditions picking up as early as Saturday evening.
The rain should hold off until Sunday late afternoon and will continue into Monday, eventually starting to lift out of the area through the day on Tuesday, this could lead to some flooding concerns but again it's still unknown where the worst swaths of rain will set up.
The EURO continues to be more aggressive with the rainfall, which continues the trend we've seen over the last couple of days of the EURO having a slightly stronger more organized storm and the GFS a little weaker.
June storms typically can be fairly unorganized with the worst of the weather east of the center of circulation, how far to the east though depends on the overall structure of the storm.
There's very little change with either of the models on Thursday morning and both seem to be coming together in regards to the track, which is well represented by the National Hurricane Center track.
As we sit in wait and see mode with regards to this storm make sure that you're going through and making your preparations, cleaning up the yard of debris, going over your preparedness kit, etc.
While the truth remains that there's still a lot of question marks with regards to the impacts the track of the storm is looking a little more clear, and unfortunately for Acadiana it means that we've got to be ready tropical weather.
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