Boy, it feels kind of 'gooey' outside this morning...and expect more throughout the day today, tonight, and all of Christmas Day. A very complex storm system has taken shape over the country's mid-section over night with a surface low pressure system near extreme NW Louisiana and appended cold front/developing squall line extending south from it into the Gulf of Mexico. The southern extent of the squall line is starting to move out of radar range but is easily detectable via satellite imagery. Will it make it here? Don't think so.
(Note: You can click on the Title of this post to see a Christmas Video if reading this from Blogger)
For today, expect due east winds off the 65 degree ocean temperature mixing with an air mass that is trying to warm up 10-15 degrees warmer than that. The result will be very 'sticky'. Temperatures will struggle to warm up as much as they'd like to as a result, but it still will be up around 75 degrees today. Good thing about today over the past few days, there is currently few to no clouds out there as of this writing and it's 67 degrees. In fact, we 'bottomed out' at 67 around 7pm last night, and it never got any cooler due to the onshore winds which kept our temperatures easily 10 or more degrees warmer than our friends over toward Orlando and Tampa. Gotta love the coast (sometimes). You'll see that in early spring it becomes the storm lovers curse. But that discussion is for another day, another season!
Chance of rain today is pretty much nil; however, latest model guidance is suggesting that by late morning we will start to see more clouds overspreading the area - both high clouds starting to stream in from the west in the southern branch jet stream, and from the east at the low levels as warmer air over runs the cooler ocean waters. If they thicken up enough a barely detectable spritz might occur, but I'd put that possiblity at the very low end or low ends. At least it's warmer air, as opposed to the odd situation we had in reverse about a week ago when there was fog right east of US1 at 5pm in the afternoon. The wind will start to veer to a more southeasterly component by late afternoon as the clouds continue to increase. Overnight lows along the coast...and probably over most of the area will only get down to about 67 once again or maybe a notch or two warmer for our late Christmas Eve. Clouds to increase overnight with the chance of a sprinkle ever increasing throughout the evening, especially after midnight.
Christmas Day. Not the best of days I'm sorry to say. At least it won't be pointlessly cold..but it will be totally cloudy with rain chances continuing to increase throughout the day. The now squall line well west of us will probably start to break up as it approaches Florida's West Coast...but there's a decent chance that pieces will still make it here. We could even be hearing thunder, especially in the 1-4pm time frame Christmas Day. I think the official forecast is giving us a 60% chance of rain, but wouldn't be surprised to see it get bumped up to 70% in one of their upcoming forecast release periods.
Rain chances will start to decrease significantly in the 7-9pm time frame Christmas Night, with the coast being the last to clear out...or at least have the rain end. After the system is passed, the Sunday-Tuesday time frame is painting a "lows in the mid-upper 50s and highs in the mid-60s" painting, with probably lots of high jet stream cloudiness which puts sort of a gunky mood on things. All this happening while yet another in the 'low pressure train' starts to take shape in the Western Gulf of Mexico. Timing on these system has been approximately every 5-7 days...and based on a study I did a long time ago, expecting such timing to be the course for much of this El Nino Winter.
Word of note: Caveat - will be watching for potential rain chances to increase much sooner than currently expected ahead of the next system if certain parameters materialize as indicated by one of the forecast models. For now I'm leaving it dry, but by Monday we might be looking at an oozy rain. More to come. Be safe out there..and try not to rush too much today. Joyous Christmas Eve!!
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