Flash Flood — La Salle, Louisiana

2024-04-10 · near Jena, La Salle, Louisiana

Event narrative

Flash flooding reported on the Austin Road bridge near the baseball fields in Jena with a foot of water covering the road.

Wider weather episode

A frontal boundary became stationary across the heart of the Ark-La-Tex region in vicinity of the Interstate 30 corridor on April 8th before slowly advancing southeast on April 9th. Concurrently, very moist southwest flow aloft resulting from a nearly cut-off low across the Desert Southwest provided for precipitable water values near 2 inches. Thunderstorms developed and gradually spread northward from Central into Northeast Texas, Southwest Arkansas, and Northern Louisiana in the afternoon and evening on April 8th and continued throughout April 9th before gradually tapering off early on the 10th, resulting in widespread rainfall amounts of 4-8 inches across the region. This convection also occurred along the northern periphery of deeper returning low-level moisture with MLCAPE in excess of 1500 J/kg and favorable deep-layer shear. As a result, the threat of large hail and gusty winds increased by late afternoon into the early evening on April 8th and early on April 9th. As the low-level jet strengthened, convection became more organized with a few supercells and increasing thunderstorm clusters. During this timeframe, numerous reports damaging wind gusts and flash flooding were received across Northern Louisiana.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (31.6860, -92.1242)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1175668. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.