Those who have lived in Louisiana long enough know the drill: full weekends as pleasant as this past one are few and far between, and the record shows it. The Storm Station crunched the numbers, analyzing data at Baton Rouge Metro Airport dating back to 1942, searching for weekends that qualify as “nice.” The results reveal that perfect-weather weekends are a rare breed.

Defining A “Nice” Weekend

Defining nice weather is subjective, as everyone has their own definition of what is ideal. The Storm Station chose the following criteria to represent what most might consider a beautiful day.

• Pleasantly Warm: High temperature between 70° and 85°
• Comfortable Humidity: A dew point at or below 66°
• Not Too Much Wind: An average wind speed of less than 10 mph
• No Rainfall: Absolutely no precipitation

To get a nice weekend, the atmosphere had to pull these conditions off for two days straight — both on Saturday and Sunday.

The Results

Out of 4,428 weekends since 1942, only 521 have checked all boxes. In other words, Baton Rouge residents average around six “nice” weekends each year, or approximately 12% of the time. We’ve seen five so far this year: the first three hit between February and April, followed by a fourth in late October, and the latest just this past weekend.

When tallying up nice weekends by month, October was the clear winner, with about a third of its weekends making the cut. April came in at number two, with November and March not far behind. If planning an outdoor wedding or big backyard BBQ, those are the months where the weather has the highest chance of cooperating, statistically speaking. This makes sense, as these are the transition seasons when the grip of summer loosens, or the winter chill fades.

Summer rarely delivers a picture-perfect weekend, recording just seven since 1942, most of which fell in June. July and August have managed only two between them over the last eight decades, occurring in 1967 and 2004, respectively. In the thick of summer, the heat and humidity simply prove too stubborn.