The Farmer's Forecast: Dog Days of Summer

By Nick Mikulas

Cenla Weather

It looks like Louisiana is about to get a taste of the dog days of summer. Drier air is moving in as an upper level low drifts westward over Texas, and brings our organized rain threat along with it. Dangerous flooding will impact parts of the Texas Hill Country toward the Rio Grande River. For us, it'll be all about how hot things get. I expect highs to get close to 100 over a good chunk of Louisiana by early next week. That'll bring heat index values in the 105-110 range.

Beyond all this, it looks like our chances for tropical troubles will be lower than a typical year as a strong El Nino has taken hold of the tropics. Upper level lows continue to float westward across the tropics creating lots of wind shear. That has caused the forecasters at Colorado State to reduce the forecast number of named storms to 9 for this season. That would put us well below our average of 14 storms per tropical season.

As we get further into the future, El Nino turns from a good thing to a not so good thing. It typically means an active subtropical jet stream with the potential for above normal rainfall, as well as more severe weather in the spring. I've been researching past years with strong El Nino conditions, and it's not quite as clear cut as it seems. The winter and spring of 1997-1998 and 2015-2016 were both strong El Nino years, but had very different outcomes in weather across the state. The general idea is that we will see more rainfall, and more severe weather, but let's not worry about crazy floods or tornado outbreaks just yet. I'll be watchin it all!