Last Night's Storms More Bark Than Bite

When I posted yesterday, there was a cluster of severe storms moving into western Louisiana.  Those storms did reach us, BUT their fast forward motion limited rainfall totals to 1-2" south of Lake Pontchartrain & 2-4"+ across parts of the North Shore. The damaging winds & hail reports were numerous to our west, but fortunately decreased in intensity when the storms reached us.  The remaining debris clouds are down over the eastern Gulf & well off the Carolina Coast.

We enjoy much quieter weather today as the slow moving upper low west of St. Louis is rotating lots of showers and storms around it.

The next upper disturbance over the Rockies will bring us another severe weather threat here on Friday.  SPC's outlook shifts the threat from Texas on Thursday wo over us for Friday.

The bottom graphic is the 5 day rain totals that predict the same areas likely receiving 3-5"+ by Sunday.

 In the short term, Wednesday & Thursday look dry here, but the rain chances increase for Friday.

FOX 8 has issued a FIRST ALERT for Friday based on the SPC's outlook.  We'll have plenty of time to watch it.  Finally...

Recent rains over the Ohio & upper Mississippi River valleys will increase the river height at the Carrollton gage to over 12 feet.  This is our normal Spring surge that should cause no issues except for River Pilots.  Compare that to last year when we were very dry and low river levels allowed a salt water wedge to start moving up river.  No signs of that happening this year.  Stay tuned!