Chill Alert: Brace for Frigid Temperatures and Hazardous Travel Conditions This Wednesday!

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – Following a historic snowfall on Tuesday, we are announcing another First Alert Weather Day for Wednesday as attention turns to hazardous cold and travel situations.

SEVERE COLD WARNING

A Severe Cold Warning is in effect across the region until 9 AM on Wednesday. This warning addresses the risk of temperatures falling below 15 degrees and wind chill factors in some locations dropping to the single digits.

EXPECTED LOWS

My predictions indicate widespread lows of 10°-15° in most of our area. The anticipated low of 12° in Baton Rouge would not only break the daily record of 19° but would also be the coldest ever observed at the airport since Christmas Eve 1989.

SNOW ACCUMULATIONS

To put it simply, Tuesday’s snowstorm was unprecedented for our region. Widespread accumulations of 4″-8″ were reported, with some areas reporting 8″-11″ or more. An official assessment for Baton Rouge has not yet been finalized, but it seems poised to be recorded as our second largest snowfall ever, trailing only the storm of 1895.

LONG-RANGE FORECAST

Another severe freeze is anticipated from Wednesday night into Thursday morning, indicating that there could be considerable travel disruptions extending into Thursday. We will maintain cautious optimism that temperatures in the upper 40s on Thursday will be sufficient to initiate a significant thaw.

before temperatures fall back to below freezing that evening. However, significant alterations will occur by the weekend, bringing much higher temperatures and favorable precipitation prospects by Sunday and Monday.

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