Large Rainfall Totals West Central Today

 

TODAY: Big difference for today in some locations except the West Central coast where rainfall totals in the Hillsborough County area are topping 5" and 6" so far in only the past 24 hours approaching 8" at least by now.  Currently there is heavy rainfall activity occurring over west Central and that is drifting south. Today's blog is going to be an extrapolation of what occurred yesterday combined with latest guidance.  

Lower to upper level trough now is across to near and just north of I-4 across the state. Secondary impulses might pass into parts of the Western half of the panhandle for strong to near severe activity much later today - but the two regimes this post will refer to is

 1. The current activity and

 2. what effect that activity will have in other areas later today combined with the current synoptic scale set us as mentioned above.

Therefore this is a guess based on yesterday's chain of events: 

Yesterday a very large outflow boundary emerged out of the west to southwest coast's activity and racedly spread out in all directions for over 200 miles after to during the peak heating hours. 

If that is to occur again today..and there is the big IF in this post... outflow could race outwardly in all easterly directions toward the east coast sea breeze which should develop today. Where that outflow meets the sea breeze AND under to just south of 'the boundary' of the upper to lower level troughs there could end up being some stronger activities East Central just in from the coast that could drift over the coastal communities. Elsewhere along the trough axis activity could occur almost anywhere along to just north of I-4 and northwestward to the Cedar Key area.

Over South Florida there was continued rains and thunder working south and east with time.

Overall, suspect a lot might change between the hours of 10:30AM - 12:30AM. 
KSC sounding showed a convective temperature of only 83F. That would not bode well for strong storms under the current circumstances as convective levels would be reached before there is hardly much heat energy built up resulting in nothing but showers in other areas. Therefore, thinking at least one or two more mechanisms will be needed to trigger storms. Latest RAP/MSA (Mesoscale Analysis) shows two potential 'vorticity maxes' over North Central at time. But how long those will persist is unknown. 

All in all, it looks that some areas might well so no rain today at all whereas there might be some spots over Central Florida that could get over 2 inches. We'll see. (Otherwise, could be strong storm up toward the Panhandle region even perhaps anywhere along I-10).  

This will especially be true if we do not see an outflow boundary emerge from the current activity shown in the image above.Tt would end up being relatively quiet compared to what was described as a potential outcome otherwise.

BEYOND: Decreasing overall rainfall coverage into Sunday through Wednesday. Boundary should settle in across Central and meander north and south for a few days as far south as Northern Lake Okeechobee and as far north as I-4. Along and south of that boundary is the area where rain chances will exist most likely but where it will be on any one of those days at this point is hard to impossible to say.