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Soggy streak to continue
Forecasters say tropical air likely to plague Acadiana.
Jim Bradshaw
July 7, 2004
John Rowland/The Lafayette Daily Advertiser
A single bolt of lightning cuts across gray-flannel skies Tuesday over Lafayette. Forecasters say that an unusual circulation of tropical air will continue to keep Acadiana wet well into next week.LAFAYETTE — Six months’ worth of rain has fallen on Lafayette during the last eight weeks, and there’s the potential that July may follow the exceptionally sloppy trend.
State climatologist Jay Grimes said it is hard to tell how long an unusual circulation of tropical air will continue to douse Acadiana, but the immediate prospect is for regular showers this week and maybe more rain next week.
According to records kept by the Lake Charles office of the National Weather Service, 15.62 inches of rain were measured at the Lafayette airport during May and another 13.16 inches in June. That totals 28.78 inches, which is more than Lafayette’s average rainfall of 28.62 inches for the entire first six months during the last 100 years.
The totals rank May-June 2004 the wettest since May-June of 1905, when 23.56 inches of rain were measured here. The wettest consecutive months ever in Lafayette were July and August of 1940, when 43.30 inches fell, 38 inches of that total brought by an August tropical storm that lingered over the area.
“A number of areas of the state have received six months of rain in eight weeks,” Grimes said. He said that 15 inches to 20 inches of rain fell in many parts of north Louisiana, and that 20 inches to
30 inches came down on south Louisiana during the two-month period.
A good portion of that rainfall was triggered by the combination of an unusual tropical air mass that lingered off the Louisiana coast, pumping excessive moisture into normally drier weather systems moving across Acadiana from the west, the climatologist said.
A similar pattern may be building this week, according to Mark Wiley of the National Weather Service.
“Tropical moisture has returned to the area,” he said. He said that could cause higher than normal chances of rain into the weekend.
The good news, Wiley said, is that a good bit of the ground that had been saturated by earlier rains has dried a bit, so the chances of flash flooding have dropped.
Despite the regular chances of rain, the Vermilion River is expected to continue a slow fall during the week, although heavy rains in a short time may bring minor flooding to low-lying areas such as Heymann Park. The river remains closed to navigation until the water recedes further.
A look ahead:
The Acadiana forecast calls for a 50 percent chance of rain today and tomorrow, 40 percent Friday and Saturday, and 30 percent Sunday.
The five wettest May-June periods in Lafayette history are:
2004: 28.78 inches
1905: 23.56 inches
1907: 23.50 inches
2001: 22.77 inches
1989: 22.68 inches
SOURCE: National Climate Data Center records
©The Lafayette Daily Advertiser
July 7, 2004
, but it was starting to look like a field so I had to 
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