Astronomical Summer Has Begun

Summer came to its official start early this morning so we are now in it for the long haul. Finally...lest we forget the horrors of the past winter. I'll take the warmth any time and the thunderstorms that come with it. Now, for our first official summer day's weather...

Today we'll have the summers warmth and the thunderstorms, just not right along the coast which seems the prevalent mode this year. A ridge of high pressure aloft has already impinged across the Central portion of the state as of early this morning, but the mid-level portion is still somewhere across St. Lucie County on the east coast to near Ft. Myers on the west coast. As such, the winds at the lowest levels are already from the SE...whereas higher up they remain neutral. During the course of the day this ridge will work its way north and place all of east central Florida in a deep layer mean S-SE wind component.

Interestingly (but probably of no consequence), there is a teeny disturbance, as it were, about to pass over the area near the Space Center as indicated by water vapor imagery loops and the enhanced low level instability in that area noted on the hourly LDIS plots. The latest sounding I saw indicated a convective temperature of only 86 degrees there too which can be reached prior to noon, but the down side is that lapse rates are less than close to impressive. PWAT is higher though today than it has been lately which is encouraging. Under such circumstances, I'd hope to at least see a cumulus field up that way...but none is evident at the time of this writing. So hopes aren't too high for action there...at least not yet...but it still has some time. If anything is going to happen along the coast of Brevard or Indian River County, which it very well may, it will have to happen before 12:30pm. Further south, the only hope of showers will be from land falling activity from the Atlantic as it approaches the coast. But at this time most of what little activity there has been is evaporating off the radar scope before reaching the coast. The DLM ridging will be more in play by mid-late afternoon which will steer any activity that does happen to form from south to north initially, but then more gradually toward the inland areas where bountiful storms will be in play once again (and as would be expected given the time of year) in combination with the sea breeze wedging in from the east-southeast. The ridging aloft isn't all that strong as it could be, yet, to inhibit percolation of the atmosphere...and least not for today.

When push comes to shove, folks along the immediate coast won't realize that there are some atmospheric differences today going on over their heads from what has been going on 'up there' the past several days, namely because it hasn't rained there no matter how one slices the pie. The only fly in that ointment will be to see if anything can initiate primarily before noon as the atmosphere sets the gears in motion. And, the folks inland won't know anything is happening either because they will conversely have showers and storms all over the place just like any other day.

For the remainder of the day (by early afternoon) we'll look at a status quo scenario with inland storms west or right along the no man's land of I-95 as well as along the favored I-4 corridor plus or minus 25 miles in either direction. The other area that could see good activity would be in the Sarasota- Ft Meyers zone late in the afternoon further south along with Western portions of the inland counties of Central Florida.