Rain/Thunderstorm Chances Back in Swing (with Daily Variations) Through Next Weekend

PORT CANAVERAL EXIT LAST YEAR - LEADING EDGE OF ARCUS DELINEATES THE GUST FRONT

A Best Guess as of 8AM of where the best shower and thunder chances will be for today.  As noted, this will be highly contingent upon where and if cloud cover will be able to move out which is in question

TODAY: Happy Fri-Blog! In continuance of the previous post (below image), the low to mid level inverted trough axis which was across the area of or near Cuba did lift north and west yesterday and overnight last night and will progress a bit  further before being absorbed into high pressure out of the realm of the Florida region. Meanwhile, in it's wake Atlantic high pressure is sneaking in from the east and across Southeast Florida with the axis toward Central Florida.

JULY 19 2012 Storm - This Day Last Year, Port Canaveral Florida

The result between a combination of those two features will be to induce an earlier in the day east coast sea breeze over Southeast Florida with greater inland penetration toward the west coast, with less to much less so East Coast sea breeze penetration the further north one travels, especially north of Vero and then toward Daytona Beach. 

Mid Level SW-WSW Flow is expected to be from about 15-20knts but weaker higher up resulting in an additive vector of about a 10-13mph storm motion from the WSW-ENE (outside of storms wobbling or propagating along  any outflow or lake boundaries). 

There is also some low level drier air poised toward SE Florida, so suspect this area will see little in remarkable rain today except perhaps as far north as Ft. Pierce toward Vero Beach.

General forecast of lower level winds late morning, forgetting not that there is a lot of clouds still out there early morning, and that abundant moisture remains. The small dark 'darts' are low level wind 'barbs', the arrows drawn in are mid level winds.

Again, and otherwise, there is still moisture in the Precipitable Water (PWAT) range of 2.0 - 2. 1" inches atmospherically. This can make for heavy rainfall totals in localized areas, but conversely can result in quick formation of non-rain producing cloud coverage. Oft, an atmosphere over laden with moisture will not produce heavy rainfall totals except under particular situations where there is a lot of upper level energy (a trigger) which is not necessarily the case today. Additionally, too much cloud coverage prevents the low levels from receiving heating, and therefore the low levels do not get destabilized (as would otherwise be the case in the absence of abundant amounts of clouds) enough to produce thunderstorms. One can have either a lot of cloud coverage and not much rain, or few clouds and plenty of sunshine and heat resulting storms later in the day.  Sometimes high atmospheric moisture (PWAT) values results in 'over casting' the rain chance. Once can 'miss the mark' by going too far, and also by underestimating the potentiality of the circumstances.

BEYOND: It appears that this same situation with variations MIGHT be with us to varying degrees for a few more days. The more the clouds at sunrise, the more questionable the entire day will be. Today happens to be one of those days.

OTHERWISE: The models continue to show a front (previously mentioned)   making it toward North Georgia. Regardless, the upper level trough supporting that front heading toward Tuesday will keep the mid level ridge axis location (which dictates, in part storm, or steering) suppressed toward South Central to Far South Florida in coming days. 

What that means is that although steering speed will not always be very strong to sometimes quite weak, it will allow for both sea breezes to interact toward the Center of the state with a lean toward the east side. Moisture will work back into South Florida as well. Some days could be quite sparse on the storms but they will be around regardless, and possibly strong. Much will depend on where some larger scale boundaries and dry slots end up, which was alluded to in the previous post. 

July 19 2012 Port Canaveral , Florida Storm moves in from the WNW