Farmer’s Forecast: Ice, Power Outages, and Extreme Cold Ahead
By Nick Mikulas
The storm that we’ve been forecasting for days is still a day away for most of Louisiana! There will be wide ranging impacts across Louisiana, and while I won’t get too specific in one given area, I will say that a large part of north and central Louisiana need to be prepared for power outages, followed by very cold temperatures.
Models remain divided into two camps. One camp is a good bit warmer, especially over south Louisiana. The other, is colder, and even tries to bring some freezing rain down to I-10. As usual, I lie somewhere in the middle. It should be noted that warm or cold, it looks like this could be a damaging ice storm along the I-20 corridor. There is a 20-30% chance of at least an inch of freezing rain in that area, and that would cause widespread power outages and tree damage.
As I always say, have a trusted local source for your weather. I can give a general overview, and tell you when things are serious, but there’s nothing better than your local meteorologist that knows your particular area. Winter storm watches and warnings are already in place for a large portion of Louisiana, and I expect more warnings to be issued as we get closer, and can refine the details a bit better.
Things will start to go downhill late this afternoon near the Arkansas border, with the freezing line slowly working southward on Saturday into Saturday night. I think the best chance for freezing rain accumulation over 1/10 of an inch will be north of a DeRidder to Ville Platte to New Roads line. I think the best chance for power outages will be north of a Many to Winnfield to Tallulah line. After this all clears out, Arctic air takes over, and we will see a hard freeze for a few nights across most of the state, with lows as cold as the single digits possible along I 20. With power outages likely, that’s going to be a rough few days. I’ll be back, updating things next week. Be safe!
Here are some helpful links for you as this event approaches.
This is a link to the Winter Storm Severity Index. You can play around with this, and see the chance for minor to extreme impacts... https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/wwd/wssi/wssi.php
This is a link to all of the winter weather products from WPC. This could be a little cumbersome, but there's a lot of information. https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/wwd/winter_wx.shtml
This is a simple one. This is the link to The National Weather Service. This is where you can find all alerts, and a zone forecast for your specific area. https://www.weather.gov