The heat will be on and amplifying for Acadiana over the next couple of days before a break in the pattern arrives with scattered showers and storms a good bet toward the end of the week and into the weekend.
While high pressure aloft has been building across the area, surface high pressure will slide into the area from the northeast through Thursday.
This in turn should bring our hottest temperatures of the spring season Wednesday and Thursday, but it appears we'll see lower dew points and consequently, slightly more comfortable overnight lows.
Look for highs Wednesday to be in the 92-94° range increasing to near 94-96° Thursday before some late afternoon/early evening storms may arrive.
The next couple of nights we should see lows closer to the upper 60s.
The record highs for Lafayette Wednesday is 95° set way back in 1894, while the record Thursday is 93° set 100 years ago in 1922...we should beat the latter record.
The challenge in Thursday's forecast whether we will break the record before scattered showers and some storms (40%) arrive from the east by late in the afternoon, with activity carrying into the early evening.
Friday into the weekend the upper ridge of high pressure breaks down, allowing for some disturbance aloft to roll in from the west.
This should trigger showers and thunderstorm chances to be near the 40-50% range Friday, 60-70% Saturday, decreasing to near 30% Sunday.
At least the scattered storms will hold our highs closer to the mid-upper 80s into this weekend.
An upper ridge of high pressure rebuilds across the region next week, resulting in more above normal temperatures, and unfortunately to add insult to injury, more summer-like humidity.
See the KATC 10 Day Forecast for the latest.
Meanwhile, you may have noticed that our blue skies in Acadiana have not been that blue, and that's thanks to plenty of smoke coming from Mexico.
The haziness has been worse to our west into Texas.
The haze/smoke in Texas has been persisting in portions of the Lonestar State for better than a month.
Conditions may improve slightly locally in the days ahead as high pressure builds in from the northeast.
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