LAPLACE — Severe weather swept quickly through St. John the Baptist Parish Wednesday afternoon, damaging the Edward Jones office at 299 Belle Terre Blvd. in LaPlace.

Robert Ricks, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said the bad weather was the result of a lone, isolated thunderstorm that developed along the lake breeze.

“It’s the Manchac convergence zone,” he said. “The winds lined up with that little bit of land where I-55 is, coming from the north.

“The flow was in such a way that you could get an isolated thunderstorm that popped up right over LaPlace. Because of the nature of the air mass it was under, it was conducive for a downburst.”

The downburst that came out of that particular storm may have produced winds upwards of 60 mph in LaPlace, Ricks said.