Despite snow not being in the forecast for Lafayette during Winter Storm Fern, the area saw a light dusting of snow Sunday night.
It wasn’t a measurable amount of precipitation, but it was enough for people to catch the flurries in videos and for a small layer of snow to appear on cars and porches.
“We had a weak disturbance overhead and once that moved across, it provided enough upper-level support that we were able to squeeze out some very light snow flurries, which typically would have been rain,” said Stacey Denson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Lake Charles.
“It was just a passing disturbance with that second surge of cold air,” she added. “If you took a look at the radar, you couldn’t even see anything there; it was so light.”
See pictures, videos: Yes, there were snow flurries in parts of Acadiana
Most of the rain moved through the area Friday and Saturday, dumping nearly 3 inches, according to measurements collected at Lafayette Regional Airport. But in northern Louisiana, .
Most precipitation that forms during a winter storm starts as snow, according to the National Weather Service, because the top layer of the storm is usually cold enough — freezing or below — to create snowflakes.
A snowflake is a collection of ice crystals that cling together as they fall to the ground. Snowflakes can only maintain their composure when temperatures are at or below 32 degrees from the base of the cloud all the way to the ground.
Sleet forms when snowflakes that fall from a freezing cloud hit a shallow layer of warmer air, causing the ice crystals to at least partially melt, according to the National Weather Service. Then, as the drops reach freezing temperatures closer to the ground, they refreeze, creating something like slushy, frozen raindrops. Depending on conditions, sleet can accumulate on the ground much like snow.
Rain is not in the forecast for the next couple of days — though there is about a 30% chance of rain on Friday — but the dangerously cold temperatures ushered in by the weekend’s rain remain. Lafayette is expected to see freezing or near-freezing temperatures for the next three nights, Denson said Monday morning.
The cold weather isn’t expected to let up any time soon. A cool pattern is favored to remain in place through the beginning of February, causing temperatures to drop below freezing at night, the NWS said in a Monday morning forecast.
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Reporter Kasey Bubnash contributed to this report.