Weather Briefing Archive

March 23, 2009 - From NWS Shreveport (Keith Stellman)

Everyone, We wanted to send out an update on the weather expected this week. Of course individual timing of the events this week may vary, but the overall picture this week looks stormy.

• Round 1: Scattered to numerous showers and thunderstorms will develop across southwest Arkansas and Northeast Texas by midmorning Tuesday...reaching South Central Arkansas and North Louisiana by late afternoon and early evening. Some of these storms may become severe...with damaging winds and large hail. The severe weather threat is expected to diminish Tuesday night.
  
  
• Round 2: The cold front which moves through on Tuesday is expected to stall along the gulf coast providing enough instability to trigger scattered to numerous showers and thunderstorms area wide Wednesday night as a weak disturbance moves across Texas. Some of these storms may become severe...with the threat for large hail.
  
  
• Round 3: Another round of strong to severe thunderstorms can be expected again on Thursday night into Friday as an area of low pressure...along with an associated front...slides across the region. The details of this system are still sketchy with the models however it appears to have the greatest potential for severe weather this week.

The other facet of these 3 rounds will be the accumulating rainfall. I’ve attached a graphic (below) showing the current 5 day total rainfall forecast.

The difference between this week’s rains and what we saw 2 weeks ago will be the way in which it falls and where it falls. This week’s rain will fall mostly due to thunderstorm activity (convection) which means it poses a greater risk of falling in a shorter period of time and create a flash flood problem.

It is also shaping up to fall more across the eastern half of the SHV CWA…i.e. Louisiana and Southern Arkansas. We of course will be monitoring this possibility as the week progresses.