WEATHER MADE CLEAR FOR ALL TO HEAR

"But seeing they could not See; hearing they could not Hear"
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"From its chamber comes the whirlwind, and cold from the scattering winds." - Job 37:9.

"The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course".

Monday, January 3, 2011

See Saw Weather Pattern For Central Florida This Week


Image: Forecast for 7pm tonight shows location of the 925mb height (around 2000 ft overhead) high pressure center this evening which is dictating our weather locally today.

TODAY: Let it be known first and foremost, this is a low confidence forecast beyond 24 hours. In the interim (does that leave us much time?), cloudiness associated with the frontal boundary advertised to pass through Central Florida around midnight performed as hoped and is currently washing out over extreme South Florida. Even with a north wind down that way, temperatures are warming into the upper 70s, as if to emphasize how little umpf the front had. Closer to Central Florida it gets a little tricky with much drier air just to the north by 50 miles or less but making little further headway to the south tward the Beach line. The cloud shield threw many forecasters for a loop this morning concerning how far south the clearing line would get, but it was all for naught since it has mostly burned off in place to our south. Otherwise, northerly winds today will gradually weaken to light onshore during the day with little in the clouds department, at least for now. Highs in the upper 60s to low 70s with plentiful mid and upper 70s over South Florida. The coolest location down there today might actually be the Keys.

TONIGHT: High pressure at the low and mid levels to persist from the West Central Gulf and across South Florida to the Bahamas with circulation around the top of this high to work to the surface and the result being a westerly surface wind tomorrow ahead of a quickly moving short wave trough shown in the image above as the dashed line. Overnight lows along the coast in the mid 50s and cooler inland.

TUESDAY: Temperatures to rebound across much of the state tomorrow with mid-upper 70s abundant, even near the coast with a west wind. The coolest spot will be along the immediate West Coast and out on the eastern most barrier islands that has two bodies of very cool water to contend with before the west wind reaches there. But it does look like the sun will be generous tomorrow, so it will be a nice day regardless.

WEDNESDAY-BEYOND: Will leave this in general terms at this point. The high pressure area over the Gulf and South Florida will gradually sink further south as a series of short waves being fed by both a developing upper low of the S. California Coast as well as low pressure near James Bay traverse both the Great Lakes region as well as the Central Plains. These systems will systematically feed into a stationary upper low just now getting its act together from James Bay to Maine. Adversely for Florida, this will be gradually lowering standard height levels aloft and correspondingly surface temperatures beginning Thursday through the weekend. Before Thursday we'll mainly see warmest overnight lows right at the coast, with the warmer temperatures found inland during the day, but no big changes worth noting.

Timing of these impulses and their direct (or even indirect) impacts on Central and North Florida has been sketchy at best. As such, determination of when it will or won't get cloudy and possibly even rain beyond Wednesday is in doubt in my mind. The only thing that seems to be consistent at this point is that it will be getting much cooler sometime Thursday and most assuredly be very cool to cold on Saturday; however, no big freezes are on the horizon. It will more of a consistently very cool period of a few days in store during late week and into the weekend is about all that seems fairly certain at this point.

Suffice it to say, the folks around the Great Lakes, the mid-Atlantic region, and the Northeast states have it much worse, as they will have the 'will it snow and if so how much' s, and probably being hearing forecasts bounced around every 12 hours. One of the biggest sticklers when push comes to shove will be the upper low off the SW California coast concerning the timing as to when it will begin to open and moves east across the U.S. The models are usually too fast in kicking them through, so expect continued uncertainty in future forecast posts.

But for Florida, just to depict how crazy it gets in the GFS run, it's showing rain every 3 days toward the middle of the month with temperatures remaining just at or a bit below normal. At one point yesterday it was showing a chance of sleet on the 9th across Central Florida (just for example). In conclusion, don't believe much (if any) of what you hear on the news beyond 3 days, and in some cases beyond 18 hours. Especially in regards to cloud cover. The bigger news now is getting to be the ever worsening and expanding drought over the state. We'll take the rain one way or the other.

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