02/14/2021
The historic winter storm is underway, and starting off fairly slowly. That’s totally expected. Patches of freezing rain, and a little sleet are falling around the state, with areas near Lafayette and Baton Rouge seeing the most extensive freezing rain this morning. Travel will be tricky today, and will likely become impossible overnight as this really cranks up.
Sunday afternoon until midnight…
Patches of freezing rain and sleet will continue this morning. A more significant wave of freezing rain and sleet will develop, especially after 4:00 PM. This will generally be light to moderate freezing rain that will be kind of off and on. Some sleet could mix in. I think most areas see 1/10-1/4 inch of icy glaze by midnight from the Sunday morning stuff, and this second round. By midnight, some areas may start to lose power.
Midnight through early afternoon Monday…
This is when the big stuff arrives. The window for the heaviest precipitation is 3:00 AM until 10:00 AM, and boy could it be heavy. Storm total liquid equivalent is forecast to be in the 1 to 1.5 inch range, with isolated totals approaching 2 inches. That’s a solid event if it were all rain. In this case, this will all be falling as freezing rain, sleet, and snow. I’ve broken things down parish by parish. I’ve kept freezing rain accumulations as is, and really increased the sleet and snow totals. In most cases, I think most of that accumulation in the sleet/snow column is sleet. It’ll look like snow on the ground, but it’ll be more of cross between snow and a block of ice. Don’t be surprised if you don’t see flakes, but still have a pile of white stuff on the ground. The *good* news is, while this will make travel nearly impossible to absolutely impossible, a quicker change to sleet could save us some power outages. With such a dynamic system, precipitation type is really tough to pin down, but the more I look, the more this looks like a sleet fest. There will be very heavy precipitation rates in that 3:00-10:00 AM window. If you need to be somewhere, be there by sundown today at the latest. Travel could be impossible through at least Tuesday afternoon. There could be several thunderstorms mixed in this heavy precipitation shield, which means we could see liquid equivalent rates over 1/2 inch per hour which would roughly equate to sleet rates around 1 inch or more per hour. This will be a high impact, historic, possibly unprecedented storm. I could slap more adjectives on it, but you get the picture. Here are the parish by parish numbers.
Rapides… 1/4 - 3/4 inch of freezing rain. 1-4 inches of sleet or snow.
Vernon… 1/4 - 3/4 inch of freezing rain. 1-4 inches of sleet or snow.
Avoyelles… 1/4 - 3/4 inch of freezing rain. 1-3 inches of sleet or snow.
Grant… 1/4 - 1/2 inch of freezing rain. 1-4 inches of sleet or snow.
Sabine… 1/4 - 1/2 inch of freezing rain. 2-6 inches of sleet or snow.
Natchitoches… 1/4 - 1/2 inch of freezing rain. 2-5 inches of sleet or snow.
Winn… 1/4 - 1/2 inch of freezing rain. 2-5 inches of sleet or snow.
LaSalle… 1/4 - 3/4 inch of freezing rain. 1-4 inches of sleet or snow.
Catahoula… 1/4 - 3/4 inch of freezing rain. 1-4 inches of sleet or snow.
Concordia… 1/4 - 3/4 inch of freezing rain. 1-4 inches of sleet or snow.
Beauregard… 1/4 - 3/4 inch of freezing rain. 1-3 inches of sleet or snow.
Allen… 1/4 - 3/4 inch of freezing rain. 1-3 inches of sleet or snow.
Evangeline… 1/4 - 3/4 inch of freezing rain. 1-3 inches of sleet or snow.
St. Landry… 1/4 - 3/4 inch of freezing rain. 1-3 inches of sleet or snow.
Behind this, temperatures will crash into the 8-15 degree range. This is dangerous, pipe busting cold. Take precautions, and be ready for the possibility that you won’t have power as this extreme cold arrives. After this insanity, another storm arrives on Wednesday. Models are borderline on temperatures, but are trending colder as they grasp that there will be an extensive ice and snow pack…. all the way to the Louisiana coast!!! There’s not much more to say, so I’m about to click submit. Have any preparations done ASAP. Oh, and the pink on the map I posted is winter storm warnings. I can’t recall an event where they were this widespread.
