While weather conditions are expected to slowly improve for Acadiana during the course of the weekend, a huge question remains to the extent of next week's U.S. arctic air intrusion impact on Acadiana.
More on the possibility of the coldest temperatures of the year later...
In the near term, scattered showers (near 60%) will continue overnight with activity slow to taper toward Saturday morning.
In addition, shower activity should become lighter and more scattered in nature by Saturday morning.
Chilly, but near normal temperatures will continue through Saturday morning with readings holding in the mid-upper 40s.
Look for more clouds Saturday with roughly a 40% chance of some light showers early with rain chances decreasing to 20% during the afternoon.
Temperatures Saturday will be near the upper 50s to lower 60s if we see a few breaks in the clouds late.
Partly to mostly cloudy skies are expected to continue Saturday night into Sunday morning with temperatures bottoming out in mid-40s once again.
Finally, after morning clouds, mostly sunny skies are expected to return Sunday afternoon with high temperatures forecast to make the upper 50s.
Partly cloudy and milder conditions are expected into early next week, but then models are diverging greatly on treatment of the arctic air that will be enveloping a good part of the Eastern U.S. into the following weekend.
Models do agree that it will get cooler sometime between Wednesday into Thursday with soaking rains, and perhaps a few embedded storms around Thursday.
Thereafter, it remains a forecaster's dilemma with a huge disparity between the GFS & the Euro models for temperatures into next weekend.
The Euro holds the true arctic air north of Acadiana while the early GFS Friday was "all in" even showing some "ocean effect" snow in the Gulf of Mexico next Friday!
In fact, the Euro does not show our temperatures ever getting below freezing through the next 10 days!
Meanwhile, the latest GFS Model (below) just before press time eased its temperature forecast going with temperatures some 5-7 degrees milder than the run earlier in the day...which seems plausible.
So for now it's a toss-up with the models, but we still have to forecast the weather...and typically with super cold Arctic outbreaks, the colder denser air usually oozes farther south than most models normally estimate.
So our forecast for now, we are siding mostly with the GFS model, although we'll hold our overnight lows next weekend closer to the mid-20s with highs getting a few degrees above freezing for those Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
There will be some moisture in the area, but there are not any overt signals for any big winter weather events, but with that being said we could see a few showers, changing to some sleet and/or snow flurries Friday with a few flakes possibly flying in the air Saturday and perhaps into Sunday.
For now, we are not expecting any kind of surface accumulations on roads, but the forecast is far from being set in stone, or in this case, ice!
See the latest KATC 10 Day Forecast for our latest thinking.
Stay tuned as we should get a much better feel for this possible winter chill for next weekend later this weekend.
------------------------------------------------------------
Stay in touch with us anytime, anywhere.
To reach the newsroom or report a typo/correction, click HERE.
Sign up for newsletters emailed to your inbox. Select from these options: Breaking News, Evening News Headlines, Latest COVID-19 Headlines, Morning News Headlines, Special Offers
