2/2 – The Chief’s “I DON’T SEE MY SHADOW” Groundhog Day Morning Forecast

A lovely day is ahead with mild temperatures and sunny skies. A few upper level non-rain producing clouds will move through from time to time. The system that will impact our area is starting to get going over the SW CONUS. The synoptic surface low that first develops should do so over SE Colorado by this evening and move SE while occluding. The disturbance over NW Mexico at the moment will rapidly move east today and catch up with a line of showers/t-storms developing over central Texas and continue to drop SE helping get another surface low developed over the north central gulf by noon Saturday. This convective low will have some strong divergence at jet level and will have some robust storms generated over the marine areas.

The low pressure system will deepen rapidly Saturday with the help of this divergent flow and another weakness moving through. Strong stability will accompany this line of mostly showers moving through Saturday and Saturday night leading to no severe weather but lightning will be possible although not frequent. Most of the lightning that can be produced will do so mainly Sat night into Sunday morning. And the heaviest rain should also be found during this time frame. Rain will gradually move from west to east Saturday starting out light and gradually becoming heavier as the day moves along. Timing of very light rain moving through will be around or just before daylight for the western most portion of the area. This will quickly transfer east through the morning and should be along a line from McComb to New Orleans by 9am and Gulfport around noon. The moderate rainfall will be behind this by a few hours, but the heaviest of the rainfall will still be even later. All of this activity will be in the form of showers until Saturday afternoon when a slight chance of lightning should begin to appear over the western most areas spreading to the aforementioned line by sunset and Gulfport by 9pm.

All severe weather with this line should remain offshore. A gale watch has been posted for all marine areas starting late Saturday. If this becomes a warning, there may also be wind advisories issued for adjacent land areas. Water levels look to be ok for now with respect to coastal flooding.