August 14 (9:00am)

Woo wee...interesting morning to say the least. Things aren't at all like they appear to be when looking out there.

The surface trough axis still lies across extreme N. Florida with an upper level trough still trying to dig into the N. Gulf of Mexico. To the south we have a weak tropical near the Eastern tip of Cuba with moisture surging well out ahead of it. Sounding looks similar to late yesterday although it is trending toward drying, but that won't last long.

Forecast: We will be in a slight drying zone for maybe 2 hours late this morning due to subsidence ahead of the moisture surge as evidenced by the drying trend on the KSC soundings the past 8 hours as well as the vapor loop. An area of showers formed off the coast as depicted by the 'rough and dirty' markup shown above (click to enlarge images) shortly after sunrise along the retreating moisture and that activity is moving with the 500mb flow toward the NE. The leading edge of new moisture should arrive around 12-1pm and initiation should begin within 1 hour after that time in a line running from Sarasota to Port St. John and points south in random isolated to widely scattered fashion.

Remember, as of this writing I haven't seen any new data yet other than the KSC sounding. Activity will continue to develop and become more widespread as the afternoon continues. Not sure why The Weather Channel is saying a 30% chance of rain for us today so it will be interesting to see if that is what ends up happening. Perhaps there's still a lot of subsidence in that moisture surge that would suppress activity but that doesn't seem to make sense. We'll find out soon enough once the Miami sounding comes out. Activity should push off initially to the NE at about 10mph and then more in a south to north fashion as the afternoon progresses. Interestingly, a solid SE surface-850mb level wind is forecast to develop by 1pm along with the surge and ahead of the inverted trough (tropical wave) yet upper level winds remain from the SW. This could lead to wide coverage of activity west of I-95 for a few hours from late afternoon into early evening. Storms should be efficient bolt producers again today (a special statement was issued yesterday solely due to lightning) and due to heavy rain a strong downdraft burst is also likely. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if we hear about a waterspout today somewhere along the intercoastal or along the ocean's shore.

Photo Ops: I don't know, but my initial thinking is that photo ops might not be too good today. I just can't ever recall seeing a good gust front approach from the SSW-SW. Maybe the WSW but I don't see that motion today at all. Upper level winds should steer convection that has developedalready further west away from E. Central Florida so activity further north might actually be supressed a bit due to activity currently happening along the Gulf Coast N. of Tampa and its parent anvils, although there will be convection there as well.

Quick Summary: This is why I mentioned we have an interesting morning and early afternoon ahead of us today. There's going to be a lot of small transitions going on all over the place. Imagine looking at a drop of water on the counter. From the naked eye it looks like..well, a drop of water and nothing more. Now take a microscope to it and see all the amoeba, molecules, whatever moving all around in it. To the naked eye the sky will look like any other day but to the atmosphere there's lots of life in there.