Similar To Tuesday, With Showers and Isolated Thunder Near the East Coast Late Afternoon

Weak Trough that was over the Eastern Gulf Yesterday crossing South Central Florida early Afternoon accompanied by some brief showers. The trough is washing out, with another one off the west coast to replace the previous one.
More showers along the second trough toward North Florida currently. 

IN GENERAL : The mid-level low that was just east of Panama City is lifting north toward the Great Lakes and being absorbed into a larger upper level trough moving across the Northern Plains heading into Friday. The weak surface reflection is riding up the eastern sea board and toward the New England Coast through Saturday and will also be absorbed by the larger system. This will all occur during the next 3 days over the Great Lakes region, with portions of the Eastern Sea board receiving some heavier rain and thunderstorms. This large low pressure area will be slow to move out, as it now appears the primary frontal boundary might occlude.  


For Florida, the weak trough that was off the West Coast is sliding through Central and South Central Florida at noon, and setting off some rain showers along the way. It appears it is weakening with time and might fizzle altogether by late afternoon. Another similar trough seems to be more associated with the mid-level low, and that is to move toward the peninsula slowly today. Not sure if it will even play in though with weather over Florida locally.


There is moderate instability showing up now on the LDIS plots in the Eastern Gulf  from near Brooksville north of Tampa Bay toward Ft Myers. This is expected to wash across the state through afternoon and reach the east coast a bit stabilized by that point in time due to lower sun angle and no outstanding other parameters at play under a zero convectively inhibited atmosphere south of the Beach Line.  Thus, much of the instability will escape freely into the atmosphere, but what remains appears will be limited to Central Brevard and South to Miami..with a secondary area closer to the secondary trough approaching Eastern North Florida toward Ormond Beach.


A light East Coast Sea breeze has developed and expect it to not get much further west than I-95 today. Otherwise, much is similar to yesterday. Cirrus clouds moved in as expected, but are not nearly as dense as feared they would be, thus the sun is shining about 50/50 across the state.  Some thunderstorms possible near and east of I-95 late afternoon through mid-evening, possibly or mostly occurring just offshore.


THURSDAY: A pre-cold frontal trough will cross the state tomorrow, with another chance of conditions similar to today, although activity might be more showers and starting earlier in the day and maintaining through dark. There might not be a sea breeze tomorrow, and if so, it will remain within 5 miles of the coast.  Much still needs to be determined for tomorrow concerning cloud and shower coverage. If showers hold off until at least mid-afternoon and sunshine can work in, thunder storms could become a bigger reality, but at this point it looks like 'shower mode '.


FRIDAY: The actual cold front , at last, gets here. This is the same front that was generating snow over the Rockies before the Big Rain event even started over Florida. Recall, we were in a Blocking Pattern that prevented the front from continuing to the eastern sea board for several days beyond the norm. The front will cross Central around mid-morning and reach South Florida after or near Sunset. There is not much if any activity associated with it as it seems, primarily because as of the 12z GFS run, it appears that jet stream cirrus might be streaming out ahead of it from the Yucatan region. The front will get about as far south as the previous front, the Florida straits.


SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Not much cold air with this front, with morning lows briefly in the mid-50s inland and remaining in the low 70Fs closer to the coast. Afternoon highs in the low-mid 80Fs (about 2-3 degrees cooler than the past 2 days) is about it. The front will begin to work back north to Central Florida by late Monday, and as such does the rain chance .  Weekend looks worse over all for the Keys and perhaps far south Florida.


MONDAY- EARLY WEDNESDAY:   It appears they front will retrograde  back to Southern Volusia sunrise to sunset of Monday, with rain chances beginning most anywhere south of Volusia County by mid afternoon through dark. The boundary continues north and the remainder of the state gets in on the rain chances heading into Tuesday. 


These days look like a 'mini-event' of what happened the last few days ago, but will behave not at all like it. Not as much wind, but still plenty of rain fall. Flooding might become an issue in those areas that already received too much previously which is pretty much everywhere except a few locations that lucked out with that last event. The bigger problem with the rain will be for those areas that drain poorly and are still water logged. Not looking at big rainfall totals, SO FAR..at least, not as high as the EPIC totals of the previous event. But nonetheless..2" or more is not entirely out of the question, especially near the coast .


THURSDAY: The 36-48 hour event will end with another cold frontal passage. This second front, as noted previously, could become KEY to what the weather over and near Florida will be like by next weekend. The GFS has varied on the southern extent of the boundary, varying from over Cuba to stalling over Central Florida. In turn, that also affects where any possible tropical activity can form in the SouthWest Gulf, across the Yucatan, and into the Caribbean Sea mainly well south and west of Cuba. Simply too soon to say if there will be another Tropical Storm to form, but the GFS is implying it now with every model run (every 6 hours), but varies vastly on where it will form, how strong it will be, and where it will go..anywhere from SW Texas to Off the Florida East Coast. That is a Big IF.