Tom's Evening Weather 05/05/2026

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]talk weather for a few minutes. Trying to keep you longer than I have to, but got some important details to give you.

[00:00:06]First of all, we'll look at the tower cam there from Rapage Regional Medical Center. Looking across the Red River, Purple Heart Bridge on the right there.

[00:00:13]You can see the clouds kind of moving slowly there uh from right to left, which is indicating a south southwest wind uh at that level. Those clouds uh probably about four or 5,000 ft above the surface, some of them lower than that. uh and it will be indicative of the wind at that level. Uh and you can see today we didn't see much sunshine.

[00:00:33]The clouds increased pretty well. It was warmer this morning than the previous two mornings. So the moisture's coming in and that is going to be fuel for rain and storms coming up in Leville. You see a mostly cloudy sky over in that direction. Say hello to all our friends there in Vernon Parish. talking about first of all unsettled weather pattern will begin tomorrow and continue through your weekend kind of off and on and hit and miss. All right, so but the main bulk of it I think would be tomorrow and into Thursday. Radar not showing anything I would interpret as rain at this particular point there. Just clouds, moisture building up, uh getting juicy as they say. and satellite and radar showing a little uh surface low to the north of us. We can see energy coming through. You can see kind of a circulation right in here not far from the four corners uh area. Uh and that is the parent upper level system ahead of that. You get the upward motion. We have a front uh which is uh giving a pretty decent temperature contrast up across the Texas panhandle and plains uh 20 plus degrees and we'll actually feel that front a little bit. uh they're not as much as they are. And I heard where Denver may be seeing the biggest May snowstorm ever out of this particular deal. Okay, so let's check things out beyond this going into a more local scale, regional scale here. Storm potential for Wednesday. So there's a severe aspect to this. I think uh we'll see strong highle winds uh to the north of us. Uh and some of that will work down into Louisiana before this is over with. I think some of those winds could exceed 100 miles per hour at about the 30 35,000 foot level uh in the atmosphere and so that's plenty of energy a loft and what that serve to do is it lifts the atmosphere you know we've got the front uh coming in Wednesday evening and so that will provide lift and the southerntherly winds coming off the Gulf of Mexico at the lower levels uh uh cause lift as well. So we got all kind of lift going on. Uh I did kind of uh quantitize the lift as I looked at my severe weather uh information earlier today and uh the uh lift is pretty strong uh with this which is one of the ingredients that you need uh with severe weather potential. Okay, so let's go into some of the detail.

[00:02:56]This is the outlook from the Storm Prediction Center. Technically you might just see a Wednesday or up there or something, but technically it's from 7 a.m. Wednesday on their clock, okay, on their timing to 7 a.m. Thursday. they cover that 24-h hour period. And I'm just going to give everybody a slight risk, a two out of five. Okay. Um I think u trying to divide parishes up with this is going a little bit beyond uh kind of splitting hairs a little bit, but uh so everybody at a two out of five risk. So that is limited, that is slight. So all the bars staying in the lower category here, but we have uh a bar for everything. Okay, there's your flood bar. Uh there is potential for some locally heavy rain uh with this, but we need rain still after that big rain. Yeah, we're still kind of needing some. And wind and hail about the same uh percentage there. Same level. Uh and then tornado risk pretty equal to the flood risk maybe a little bit uh maybe a little bit higher. Uh I think uh so severe weather uh points I want to make with you. First of all, a detailed uh timeline here. I think we were looking at probably about 400 pm Wednesday uh for the potential to start and that will last uh through Wednesday evening overnight and to about 5 a.m. uh Thursday there uh for that time frame.

[00:04:17]So that's about about 13 hours I think.

[00:04:20]All right. So the features involved first of all we got just kind of a a disturbed uh flow pattern aloft little uh ripples of energy little waves of energy wavelets of energy aloft there and those guys raised lift the atmosphere as well. So uh again it's all part of the the severe weather outlook all part of the severe weather potential. there will be convective outflow from storms and that coldront on the large scale what we call a synoptic scale coldront uh coming in uh with all that. Uh so the pattern as far as radar is concerned fits a few supercells and a possible line and uh clusters uh of that as well threat level slight two out of five. Uh all threats are on the table wind, hail and tornadoes. Now remember, in order to be classified as a severe wind event, the wind speed must be measured at 58 mph or higher or be associated with some type of damage. Uh that would be uh in that 58 mile per hour or higher uh damage level. Uh all right. So hail quarter size or larger.

[00:05:29]And then tornado, any tornado will do for severe weather classification there.

[00:05:33]Here are the percentages from the Storm Prediction Center. They do a lot of research on this and it gives us an idea of what the risk would be. So wind and hail the top two less than 30% within 25 miles of a point and then the tornado risk is less than 10% uh 25 miles uh from any point. And so again they do a lot of uh verification uh with these numbers. And I'll tell you something uh that I saw on the uh National Weather Service Lake Charles website that these percentages that I'm giving on a given day, a nonrisk day, okay, where there's not a risk level up for severe weather, uh these numbers are 10 to 30 times higher uh than those days. Okay? So that's why we watch these things. Uh so open this is one of the things I'm concerned about. I'm going to uh after I do my stream uh uh eat dinner and uh so later on tonight in the evening, I'm going to run through my own severe weather uh forecasting uh mechanisms and and parameters and uh indices and all that good stuff. One of the things I'm watching with this one, which could uh allow it to overachieve. Now, the storm prediction center did raise it to a level three out of five up across northeast Louisiana and into Miss points eastward into Mississippi and Alabama.

[00:06:51]Uh Slow, everybody's still in the uh slight risk, two out of five. But I'm watching the potential for open sector, warm sector supercells. Okay, supercells that are what we call discreet. They're out there by themselves. They have no competition for the fuel in the atmosphere. They don't have to compete with a cluster. So they don't have to compete with a line or a bunch of neighbors nearby. Okay? They're out there by themselves. So I'm watching that potential. Uh if it happens out ahead of the cold front, we could overachieve and actually pick up an enhanced wind, hail, or tornado. Or we could see this level uh go up from two to five uh to a 3 to five from the Storm Prediction Center. And I'll post something on Facebook. Uh uh I don't think I can get it on by 8:00, maybe 9:00 after. Sorry, so late, but it takes time to do some of this stuff uh if you do your own homework with it. Monitor your weather sources. Um I'll be uh talking about it, I would imagine, for tomorrow as well. All right, rainfall potential. This is another dimension.

[00:07:53]There will be some pretty decent rains with this and we still need some rain, I think, uh there as we go into that. Uh we've got some of this some of the same ingredients that create severe weather like strong winds, a loft, uh and of course a lot of moisture coming in from the Gulf of Mexico. And this is good quality moisture. The octane level is pretty high with this stuff there. So it's going to feed that severe threat and a little threat for heavy rainfall.

[00:08:19]So that dimension, I'll just do it pretty generally with you through Thursday. Okay, this is my expectations.

[00:08:25]Common amounts. There's going to be a large range. Some folks may almost get left out with this. And u I guess it's possible somebody could get left out of this event, but I'm just going say a quarter to inch and a half peak amounts.

[00:08:39]Somebody could get as much as two to three inches. And if you get one of the bigger storms, one of those 50,000 footer uh tops uh with a large volume updraft, uh you can pick up an inch and a half to two inches of rain in an hour or less. All right? And that usually creates problems in some of the metro areas uh in the central Louisiana area areas that we know those uh places well, don't we? Okay, so futurecast, I'll step you through this quickly. Uh 8:00 p.m.

[00:09:09]tonight, I don't think you have anything to worry about. Uh straight sprinkle.

[00:09:13]Yeah, that's what this model is indicating. I think your commute tomorrow morning uh is pretty good.

[00:09:17]There could be a straight little sprinkle or shower then. No storms. Uh and then as we go into the five o'clock hour for the PM commute, looks like things are starting to come together, you see a little heavier cores and a little bit more in numbers, but uh I don't see anything severe with that particular depiction. Uh so but then as we go toward 10:00, this model indicating that we're going to see areas to the northwest of us line is going to try to form along the front. Uh but now one of the things uh in the atmosphere is the high pressure, the warm bubble of air is still kind of setting to the south of us with kind of a northward extension overhead. Uh so uh with part of that that could um be detrimental to any line forming and apparently from this model's perspective, that's what's going to happen. You see the line uh not organizing like we have in a couple of previous events. All right. Uh right there, that would be a pretty good storm right there. that might be a candidate for warning if something like that were to happen. So, that's why Nick and I always watch this stuff very closely because it's very detailed. Uh it's very tricky. Okay. And then by 4:00 a.m. down into the southeastern parishes and then it's out of here for a little bit for uh Thursday morning. Okay. So, let's go back after the futurecast now to the 7-day and uh project that everybody always wants a 7-day forecast and uh you know without the presence of severe weather. This is the most important part of the weathercast so you can plan your next seven days there. Uh so 80% tomorrow, 70% tomorrow night. Uh go about to 50/50 there for Thursday and Thursday night. drop it to a couple of 40s there for Friday and Saturday and Friday night and pick it up a little bit for Sunday uh association with this little front coming in uh and then keep 40% going uh Sunday night. So the Wednesday, Thursday thing is not the only deal. This is what I was talking about an unsettled pattern going all the way through the weekend. uh they're getting these two fronts through this time of year in May uh is a chord this far south toward the Gulf Coast and the deep south. Uh they don't have a lot of momentum and so they don't whisk through like they do in the winter time. All right. Uh but finally we see Monday and Tuesday improving weather there with turning a little bit cooler there uh for Wednesday, Tuesday morning there. All right, so that's it from me. Uh thanks for being with me. And uh Nick, I think is going to be able to uh uh have a presence here locally uh uh being able uh he may even have the uh ability to stream a little bit, but I know he's going to be uh active on Facebook. Uh and I'll be streaming or doing Facebook uh as well. And thanks for all you folks uh joining me there on chat. And we'll see what happens uh tomorrow. Take care and hope your uh Wednesday is wonderful.