An interesting article sent to me by someone in Houma, Louisiana. Their local paper carried a piece this week about plans to improve the evacuation process in southern Louisiana. Highway 90, a main thoroughfare through the area was a bottleneck last September as Hurricane Ivan steamed pass Southeast Louisiana heading toward the Alabama/NW Florida coast. A trip to Lafayette from southern Terrebonne parish around Grand Isle took over six hours. Usually, the trip would take less than two hours.

The new plan, which took $7.5 million to develop (that’s another story) calls for a mandatory evacuation of residents south of the intracoastal waterway in Terrebonne, Lafourche and other southern Louisiana parishes fifty hours in advance of an approaching Category Three hurricane.

The rest of the coastal parishes would be under mandatory evacuation forty hours before expected landfall. Contraflow, or the process where all highway lanes are turned to one way away from the coast, would be implemented thirty hours before expected landfall. There is a great deal of coordination between the states of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama about contraflow on the major interstates.

One parish official criticized the plan, saying that it does not specify which routes residents of certain areas are to use, but leaves that up to individual choice. He believes tat people in certain towns and locations should be restricted to using specified routes only.

Hurricane season begins on June 1 and it is good to see more and more planning by civil defense officials in coastal areas. We will likely once again see an active season since we continue to be in a high period of activity. There is a documented pattern that alternates between higher than normal and lower normal activity every 25-40 years. That and the fact that no El Nino is expected to be in place this year.

**There will be no Friday afternoon web update***

Just found out I will be doing the weather at 5:00 and 6:00 live from the Hoover Met, where the Barons will have their first home game of the season tonight. Quite frankly, there isn't much to discuss today anyway.

Sunny mild days and clear cool nights will continue into early next week. Moisture gradually returns late next week, with a few scattered showers possible by Wednesday and Thursday.

Headed out to the stadium now... enjoy the sunny weekend and lets play ball!

The Friday morning web video is on the server:

http://beta.abc3340.com/weather/video.hrb

Pretty simple forecast for us through the weekend; the sky will be clear, we just have to figure out the highs and lows. Bottom line is that we will enjoy some beautiful weather in the days ahead, with sunny mild days and clear cool nights. No need to mention any chance of rain through Tuesday of next week.

Moist air will begin to return over the latter half of next week, but there isn't much out there to suggest any big rain event. We will mention a chance of a shower Wednesday through Friday, but it could very well be about 10 days from now, around April 25, before a widespread significant rain event returns thanks to a passing cold front.

The latest GFS in hand shows a sharp eastern U.S. trough developing following that front in the April 27-30 time frame, which would suggest cooler but dry weather here is the solution is correct. I know our friends at NASCAR hopes that solution is correct since that would suggest dry and pleasant weather for race weekend at Talladega at the end of the month...