With Old Man Winter bearing down on Louisiana, there’s some new terminology from the National Weather Service to get used to.
“Before, what we had was freeze and hard freeze watches and warnings; and then in addition to that, we had wind chill advisories and wind chill warnings,” says Danielle Manning, lead meteorologist at the National Weather Service in New Orleans.
But now, that’s all changed.
Now, the NWS issues cold weather advisories and extreme cold warnings.
“People don’t really care if it’s the wind chill or the temperature,” Manning points out. “They just want to know what it feels like outside.”
Manning says the thresholds depend on where in the state you’re at.
“For the cold weather advisory, 25 degrees for the southern area and 20 degrees for the northern area,” says Manning. “And then the extreme cold warning would be 15 degrees for the southern area and 10 for the northern area.”
The line separating the southern and northern areas is just north of the I-12 corridor.
Manning says they made the change, because people didn’t care whether it was the temperature or the wind chill factor that’s causing conditions to be brutally cold outside.
“It doesn’t really matter what’s causing the temperature to feel that way,” says Manning. “It’s just that it’s going to feel that cold when you go outside.”
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