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Thursday, September 29, 2011

Training Storms leave varying amounts of rain in South Louisiana

Using our specialized radar system, we have identified storm totals for last night's training severe thunderstorms. Training means one after another, so it is like a train. A very long train. Training storms are very prone to cause flooding, and are my choice for the best type of storm able to produce flash flooding.
Anyway, we checked two radar sites that are within the hardest hit area's range. The hardest hit area was Maringouin, LA. However, the input from the two different radar sites differed. We ended up deciding to show the one that seemed the closest to the radar itself, which would be where the most accurate information would be.
We have labeled them for your convenience. So this is from a radar centered in the Lake Charles, LA area. The the other radar site that we looked at was a bit to the northwest of New Orleans. The tricky thing is that this radar had an entirely different scale. Keep in mind the exact same scenario was occurring within these two NWS Offices that run the radars. The specialized radar system The Weather Centre uses collects raw data from the radar- direct from the source, so to say. Because there is no flash flood warning (or flood warning for that matter), we don't know what happened to the 6-10 inches of rainfall. (6 inches was the maximum total estimated for the other radar site.) There was a flaw flood warning at one point. Maybe the radars had an accident (highly unlikely since two separate radars both estimated more than 5 inches of rain fell). We may never know as there appear to be no visible spotter reports.

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