High pressure will continue to dominate across Acadiana as low pressure along the mid-Atlantic states drifts westward over the next few days. The low off the east coast may acquire some tropical characteristics over the next several days as it drifts northwestward, but this system has already been producing a large tropical storm-like circulation leading to beach erosion and gusty winds above 40mph offshore. This will make for inclement weather from the mid-Atlantic through New England over the next several days while we benefit from dry weather on the western flank of this system. Look for lots of sunshine through the weekend with highs in the mid-80s accompanied by lows in the upper 50s to lower 60s. Elsewhere, the area of disturbed weather by Hispaniola is beginning to move to the north with a small window of opportunity to develop with this system before getting absorbed by the cyclonic gyre off the East Coast.
The weather has settled down enough for me to catch up on all your emails from the recent hurricanes. Thanks to all of you for your feedback, positive and negative, as it really helped us as a weather department and station to cover the storms appropriately. Between Gustav and Ike, I personally received more than 500 emails about coverage and feedback on the job we did in weather and as a station on the coverage. While overwhelmingly the emails were quite positive, we were/are always happy to hear from you, even if it is negative! It helps us to better gauge on how to cover future storms. Also there are a lot of people behind the scenes that worked ironman-like hours at KATC during our last two storms; from news, sports and production personnel, to sales staff…everybody at this station pitched in many hours (a lot of them weekend hours and slept here) to answer phones, keep the web going and our coverage on point. To them a BIG THANK YOU! Like many other businesses we have a hurricane plan; we executed it, but as always learned some new things about covering storms and about ourselves as a team. Thanks again for the feedback and keep it coming, it will serve to make us better as community servant. Rob
Our beautiful weather will continue as yet another cool front will push through the area by tomorrow evening. Tuesday will bring partly cloudy skies with highs returning into the mid-upper 80s. Look for sunny and more comfortable conditions for mid-late week with highs closer to the low-mid 80s while lows drop into the upper 50s. Moderating temperatures and humidity will return this weekend but so far it appears to remain dry through next Monday. It looks like our first real opportunity for rain chances should arrive for the Tuesday-Thursday time-frame of next week.
I was forwarded a few resource links from a viewer that are produced by the Corps of Engineers. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lock Status Page shows lock status across the areas and the Mermentau Basin Salinity Information shows how much salt is in the local waterways. This is a great information for those in the agriculture business and are interested in hunting/fishing in these areas.
