FIRST ALERT FORECAST: Hot, dry weekend & week ahead

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Most of the area stayed dry through Friday afternoon and evening and the Storm Team forecast looks even drier over the weekend.

Set rain chances at 20% or less Saturday and plan for an essentially rain-free Sunday. Both mornings will start out in the upper 60s for most WAFB neighborhoods, with weekend afternoon highs in the upper 80s. A few neighborhoods could even hit 90° Sunday afternoon. The humidity should remain tolerable over the weekend. Saturday will be a partly cloudy day, becoming a sun/cloud mix during the afternoon when a couple of t-showers pop up. Sunday looks to be fair to partly cloudy all day long.

The bottom line is the weekend looks like a good one to spend some time outdoors as we close out the month of May.

An upper-level ridge will take charge of the weather for the better part of next week. That ridge will set us up for very warm and mostly dry days through the work week. The First Alert forecast remains dry Monday and mainly dry Tuesday too. Highs both days will be around 90°.

Expect 90s for the rest of the work week, although low-end rain chances return Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday as isolated afternoon t-showers are possible for all three days. The extended range outlook suggests the upper-level ridge will begin to break down by Friday into Saturday, taking the lid off the atmosphere and allowing for an increased rain potential into the weekend. Plan for scattered, mainly afternoon showers and t-storms next Saturday and Sunday (June 6 and 7) with highs in the upper 80s.

In the tropics, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) is monitoring a broad area of low pressure in the west-central Atlantic. The area has already been tagged as Invest 92L and the NHC has 50/50 chances for development over the next two to five days as of Friday morning (with the next update expected Friday evening). While the system is not a threat to the U.S., it’s noteworthy in that if it were to become Cristobal by Sunday, this would be the first year with three named storms before the official start of the Hurricane Season (June 1).

There are also some early rumblings about a potential area in the southwestern Gulf next week. A lot of uncertainty remains and it’s certainly nothing to get overly concerned about. Just follow the WAFB Storm Team on-air and on social media over the weekend for possible updates.

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