The Farmer's Forecast: March 8, 2024
By Nick Mikulas
Louisiana Farm Bureau News/Cenla Weather
A couple of waves of rain are going to move through Louisiana over the next 10 days. As is typical for this time of year, the threat for rain will be tied to the potential for some severe weather. When dealing with the whole state, it’s tough to say if this rain is needed or not at your specific location. For example, at my house in Alexandria, we had 1/2 inch of rain from the storms we had earlier this week. 30 miles southeast of where I live, over 5 inches fell. At my location, we could use the rain, while a short drive southeast was dealing with flood warnings earlier this week. These kind of things torment me as a meteorologist, and can completely alter things for the agricultural community. Let’s take a look at how things will evolve over the next 10 days.
Round one of the rain will spread across Louisiana today, with some heavy rain. Totals for most will be in the 1/4 to 2 inch range. This is a big range, but Louisiana covers a large area. The best chance for rain totals over an inch will be roughly along and north of a Many to Winnfield to Waterproof line. The Storm Prediction Center has most of the state under a slight risk for severe weather, which is a level 2 out of 5.
After the rain exits southeast Louisiana very early Saturday morning, it looks like a nice stretch of clear days from Saturday through most of Wednesday. It will be a bit cooler over the weekend, with warmth and moisture returning by mid week. Our next chance for rain will begin early Thursday, and will last into next Saturday. When we are dealing with something this far out, details are going to be tough to come by, but a general 1-3 inches of rain looks likely out of this system. There will also be another threat for some severe storms with this system, but again, the details on that will be much clearer by next week.
That’s a general overview of what’s on the way. I wanted to add a few helpful links for you to use in a pinch to help you see some of the forecast products that are generated from a couple times to several times a day from NOAA and the National Weather Service.
www.weather.gov This will take you directly to the National Weather Service homepage. You can point and click for your local forecast, and dig into anything from local climatology, to hour by hour forecasts.
www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov This site is great for getting an idea of how much rain is possible over the next 7 days. They break it down by day under the QPF tab, and you can combine days to see how much will fall from a multi day event. This can give you an idea of when to time anything that will depend on when it will rain, and how much will fall.
www.spc.noaa.gov This is the go to site for severe weather information. You can read technical discussions, or keep it simple and see what the risk for severe storms will be on a given day. They take these outlooks out to 8 days, though they get much more specific for the next 2 days.
www.cenlaweather.com This is my website that I run with another local meteorologist, Tom Konvicka. The two of us have well over 60 years of combined experience forecasting everything from hurricanes to ice storms to sunny days across Louisiana. This site has an agricultural section that has things ranging from soil moisture content to past rainfall amounts to outdoor forecasts for hunting and fishing.
Here are the links for the Cenla Weather app. While our main focus on this app is Central Louisiana, our default settings are set to give you the National Weather Service forecast. So many apps will have wild swings as they are dependent on model runs, and aren’t touched by human hands. Our forecasts are generated by us, or the National Weather Service, so they will be consistent, and as accurate as we can make them! Basically, this app is a quick way to see what the National Weather Service is forecasting for your area, or for anywhere else in the United States. We are also building a network of weather stations and weather cameras across the state that will be expanding from 2 to 8 over the next month or so, and hopefully much more than that in the near future.
Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.centralla.wx
Apple https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cenla-weather/id6466455128
I wanted to start this off by giving you a forecast, but giving you the tools to check your own forecast in a pinch. Please feel free to reach out to me with any suggestions or questions at nick@cenlaweather.com. I can’t think of a community of people that needs good, responsible, and accurate weather forecasts more than Louisiana farmers and ranchers. I’m here to help however I can!