Nicholas Drifting Slowly Towards Louisiana...

The center of former Hurricane Nicholas, now weakened to a Tropical Depression, is right over Beaumont/Port Arthur staggering towards the Louisiana border.   Most of the heavy rains have "decoupled" (separated) from his center, but there still remains a threat for heavy rains over the eastern side of this system.  Satellite views show that "decoupling" tonight.

The only bright (cold) cloud tops are over central Louisiana and southward off our coast.  It's the ones over the Gulf we need to watch IF they keep developing and form "training bands" by daybreak tomorrow.

I'm placed where Nicholas is tonight along with the potential bands off our coast.   You can see the ill defined center near the Sabine River and I'd like to see that head northward overnight and NOT head eastward as NHC is thinking.   The farther away from us, the better.

So assuming the NHC track proves accurate, the heavy rain potential has been extended farther to the east along most of the Gulf coast.

David once again had some excellent graphics depicting the heavy rain threat on Wednesday.

It's difficult to go against so many model forecast, but David did show the dry air spreading in from the west on the water vapor loop.

With so much dry air spreading in, it's hard to understand how we could get such predicted high rain totals.  As David just said..."I'm erroring on the side of caution".    Hopefully the models are overplaying the heavy rain threat?  Stay tuned!