What the forecast actually says — NWS Area Forecast Discussions, decoded into plain English.
Area Forecast Discussion · National Weather Service Shreveport (SHV) · issued Friday, September 11 at 6:22 AM CDT.
Revised in 2 passages since the 1:15 AM discussion. See every revision.
Messages
The upper ridge will continue to briefly weaken its grip on our region, allowing for a trough and weak frontal boundary to drop south with rain chances increasing areawide today.
The ridge will quickly reassert control and expand its reach by this weekend into much of next week, limiting daily convection to very isolated activity mainly during hours of peak heating.
Medium-range guidance continues to hint at a longwave pattern shift next weekend with the upper ridge retrograding W/SW and a stronger front diving south across the eastern half of the U.S.
Discussion
A brief and subtle pattern shift continues early this morning with slight weakening of the upper ridge axis, allowing a trough to dip south across our region. The trough will help to nudge a weak cool front slightly farther south into our northern zones later today, resulting in better coverage of showers and thunderstorms to areas along and north of I-30. Farther to the south, convection will be less concentrated given the weaker forcing although the sea-breeze enhancement may further contribute to convection in our southern zones as a weak surface low/trough continues to drift northward along the central Gulf coast this afternoon.
Despite a bit more in the way of cloud cover today, temperatures will still range through the 90s this afternoon so max heat index values will still likely reach into the lower 100s for at least a few hours. Compressional warming ahead of the front may also help to amplify this heat so still cannot rule out some areas briefly reaching heat advisory criteria but should remain the exception and not the rule. Beyond today, any rainfall looks hard to come by over the weekend and through much of next week as the upper ridge axis will quickly settle back across the region.
Temperatures will climb higher once again through at least the middle of next week with heat advisories possibly returning as well. Convection will generally be isolated to widely scattered at best during this timeframe, driven mainly by daily heating and instability each day through much of next week. Looking out beyond next week, the upper ridge still appears set to retrograde to the W/SW by next weekend as part of a longwave pattern shift. Of course, this is still beyond a week out in the forecast so we will continue to monitor these trends in hopes of finally breaking the prolonged summer heat.
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