Today’s Forecast
Good morning and happy Wednesday! I hope everyone has had a great week so far and has been surviving the heat! Today will be another rainy and stormy day with higher winds. Temps will remain in the mid 80s and lows will be in the lower 60s. Storms currently aren’t looking to hold too much of a severe threat, but the small chance for some strong convective storms to pop up is a possibility. Looking at tomorrow, it will be mostly sunny with higher chances of rain as we go into the night. Highs will be in the mid 80s and lows will be in the upper 50s. As this cold front continues to push through, Friday will be the last of the rainy days. Temps continue to cool down as we go into this weekend with highs in the lower 60s and lows in the mid 40s.
Recent Wild Weather
Last Wednesday, April 10th, an EF2 tornado struck the small town of Slidell, LA just outside of New Orleans. The 9-mile-long tornado was so strong, with it’s 120 mile an hour damaging winds, that it completely ripped apart metal buildings and beams. It also ripped roofs off of homes and businesses before finally dying off. A local officer who was caught out in the tornado in his patrol car says he couldn’t see anything with all the debris flying through the air around him. Afterwards, he described the scene as how it looks after a bomb goes off. There were shattered windows, downed trees, and debris littering the streets as far as the eye could see. “It was just total devastation … just catastrophic loss of property,” officer Rodney West, recalled.
Wild Weather this Day in History
On this day in weather history we can just roll it back one year to April 17, 2023 when West Palm Beach, Florida would receive record amounts of rainfall. In just a 24 hour period a record-breaking 4.97 inches of rainfall fell. That record beat out a century-old record on April 16, 1893 of 1.97 inches. Along with the rain was tropical force wind gusts, booming thunder, and unbelievably, even sprinkles of dime to quarter-size hail. Flights were being delayed, as well as, school days being prolonged to wait for the peak of the storm to pass.
I hope everyone has a great rest of the week and stays dry as this cold front begins to push through our area!
Sources: https://www.foxweather.com/extreme-weather/slidell-louisiana-officer-hero-tornado-surrivor https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/2023/04/17/record-rainfall-in-west-palm-beach-but-is-it-enough-to-end-drought/70121207007/