Back to Blog
Year to date precipitation totals6/11/2023 ![]() ![]() Under Select Data Range, click the calendar icon and select dates on the Start and End calendars to reflect your dates of interest.Under Select Weather Observation Type/Dataset, select Daily Summaries.Go to the Climate Data Online Search page (opens in a new tab) “But coming into April and May, those showers could very much return and we'll see some better conditions start to crop up.NOTE: You may want to print these instructions so you can read them while you perform each step in another browser tab. “The Climate Prediction Centers put out that they do expect the drought to continue at least over the next couple of weeks,” she added. Weather: See flooded cars, buildings in Lake Charles after the city experiences third wettest day ever And then in May, we had that massive wet period here in Southwest Louisiana,” Calhoun said. Last year we had a dry start to the year in January, February and March. “We could see the very wet pattern return soon, or we may not. While recent weather has Lafayette poised for one of its driest starts to a year yet, the area’s dry spell isn’t likely to hold out for more than a couple of months as Southwest Louisiana’s typical rainy summer months return. That type of grass can easily start taking on flames,” Calhoun said. “We've had a couple of very hard-pushing, dry air masses come out of the Midwest that have really stayed situated on top of Louisiana, which allowed for some of the marsh grass to dry out. That prompted the NWS in Lake Charles to issue a red flag warning and fire weather watch earlier this month warning that the region’s long dry spell combined with high winds make for “critical fire weather conditions,” the weather service wrote in a warning. This year’s dry winter has been accompanied by unusually windy weather in Southwest Louisiana that typically only combines with La Nina patterns every several years. The pattern is also associated with more active hurricane seasons in the Atlantic Ocean, which meteorologists expect the Gulf South will experience this year. Rainfall during La Nina patterns typically comes from storms that move quickly across the area, Calhoun said, unlike the late summer and fall storms known to sit over Acadiana and dump massive amounts of flooding rain on the region.Ģ022 hurricanes: CSU forecasters predict another active hurricane season with 19 tropical storms, 9 hurricanes And that explains the slow start to the year in January, February, and then getting into March,” she said. “Basically, what that means for us on this side of the United States is that our winters are going to be warmer and drier, and we did kind of see some of that. This year’s dry start is largely because of the La Nina weather pattern, Calhoun said, which has brought warmer, drier winters to Southwest Louisiana in recent years. Only two years have seen less rainfall in Lafayette by April 11 than 2022 has, with just 6.17 inches falling at that point in 1981 and a meager 4.31 inches in 1907, according to NCDC data. ![]() So we are under by around 0.76 inches for the month of March, and so we are having a pretty dry start to the year.” “Typically, in March, we average about 3.7 to 3.72 inches of rain … but this year, we're at 2.96 inches. “We are looking at one of the driest starts to a year in quite some time,” said meteorologist Marti Calhoun with the National Weather Service in Lake Charles. While the past week’s storms stand to give a modest boost to that figure, the start of this year has been one of the most dry in recent memory. The first few months of any given year in Lafayette are generally among the most dry, but rainfall totals through this past week put the city on track for its driest spring yet.Īs of April 11, the most recent date that data was available from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center, just 7.28 inches of rain have fallen in Lafayette this year. Lafayette is off to one of its driest starts in recorded history, with rainfall totals more than 50% below average in 2022. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |