Acadiana will continue to enjoy a benign summer pattern with slight rain chances through Friday, but increasing prospects of scattered showers and thunderstorms can be expected into the weekend, and most likely, into early next week.
In the near term, expect a continuation of partly cloudy, hot and humid conditions with a slight chance of a passing shower or storm at roughly 20% or less, through Friday.
Deeper moisture associated with an upper level trough of low pressure is expected to slide westward into Louisiana this weekend, allowing for a gradual increase in our shower and thunderstorm chances, starting late Saturday afternoon/evening and continuing into Sunday.
It gets more interesting into next week as a frontal trough is expected to drop southward toward the Gulf Coast by Tuesday, and with it deeper tropical moisture and higher rain chances likely for the area.
Both the Euro and GFS models do "pool" this deep tropical moisture in the vicinity of the Northern to Northeastern Gulf Coast by mid-week, and there is an outside chance that a weak tropical disturbance that may develop in this area.
Nothing to worry about yet, and it appears that this feature should move to the east to northeast this time around, rather than drift to the west.
Nonetheless, these features, as we were brutally reminded last week/weekend, always have to be watched, but speculating beyond a 7 day forecast would be just that at this time.
Meanwhile, it has become readily apparent that Barry left a "footprint" of below normal water temperatures in the Northern Gulf of Mexico thanks to upwelling of cooler waters from below and some fresh water rain run-off...but there are already signs that these below normal water temperatures ares beginning to fade and shrink.
