8/31 – The Chief’s “Final Day of August” Morning Forecast

Mid level dry air will remain in place today. This will help cap the environment, making it harder for thunderstorms to get started. There will be some activity around though and the potential that one or two could be strong or severe will exist as well. We will tip toe into September Thursday, and some of the area could feel some surface “drier” air filter in. With depth of dry air and strong heating, the lowest levels should mix out quite deep, with this, dew points could mix out to the mid-60s in a light northerly breeze. But this would likely move the thermometer up a few degrees as well. This back door front that brings the dry air should move southward and slow to a stall from Baton Rouge to Mobile. This front will pivot once it stalls and the pivot point should be near Mobile Thursday. The forecast has been in flux lately with this boundary moving into the area. As it is now expected to deliver somewhat deeper dry air, it should be able to bring precip chances down quite a bit making today and Thursday our lowest chances so far this week. As the front moves back to the NW, deep moisture will fill behind it and by Friday we should begin to tack on some higher precip chances.

Using the words “tip toe” into September is in a tropical sense because I for one do not want to wake that beast. We remain active over the open Atlantic along with the normal march of easterly waves moving through and extending to the north of the equator. One of these will be moving over Central America and Mexico through the weekend. Some of the moisture from this has been advertised to get funneled northward impacting at least the NW gulf coast. Locally, we will be in a very normal summer regime with respect to temps and daily showers/t-storms percentages.

The extended portion of the global models would like to bring a large synoptic system into the southern Canadian provinces with a deep actual cold front penetrating into southern Arkansas and maybe even northern Louisiana by the end of next week. All this to say that we could eventually see an early season cold front make its way into the region sometime in September. But we will have to wait on that.