Florida's "Wet Season" and Full on Summer to Commence Tuesday /Wednesday

 The weather lately (especially inland) has been warm to unusually hot, but rainfall overall has been lacking other than in parts of South and South Central Florida. No, it hasn't been completely dry by any means, but coverage for the most part has been pretty meager. Additionally, we have been toying with at to near record high temperatures (mainly inland) for several days now, and today and tomorrow will be no different.

 The bigger story (which we don't usually hear anything about) is that overall precipitable water values are at to just above 2.00" over South Florida (mainly) and those values will work there way north through North Central Florida somewhat on Monday but more so on Tuesday and even more from Wednesday onward. For comparison, in the winter these values are often less that 0.5" , and even much lower than that at times.

With increased moisture comes increased rain chances and cloud coverage. With increasing clouds afternoon high temperatures will 'cool' a bit, but morning low temperatures will be muggy to even warm at times, especially along the immediate coast. 

Though some storms could be strong where multiple boundary collisions occur late in the day, temperatures aloft will not be all that cold, so the biggest 'threat' we might be looking at as we get late in the week will be flooding issues , which is a bit ironic considering the south half of the state has been in varying degrees of drought. Regardless, the Monday through Thursday period could still exhibit quite a bit of lightning.

As we work toward the Wednesday time frame you might be hearing on the news about 'tropical development' (somewhere in the East Central to Central Gulf of Mexico) but at this point guidance (models) are not showing much more than a possible tropical depression, and even at that whatever does form (if anything) is not shown to have much in regard to 'wind impacts' anywhere. 

The biggest news I expect we'll be hearing about is RAINFALL TOTALS. Some models are showing that TOTAL RAINFALL in some locations could be anywhere from 4-8 inches between Tuesday through Thursday (graphic below).

As you can see, by Tuesday morning the DEEP TROPICAL MOISTURE is really working in. That means better rain chances generally speaking AS LONG AS THERE IS A TRIGGER. Otherwise, it means very muggy morning, noon, and night, with clouds being enable to linger over head for long periods of time.

After Thursday things get sketchy, but for example the latest Global Forecast System (GFS) is showing a weak tropical low northwest of the Florida Keys. The amount of available moisture doesn't change much across the second half of the week (it's very high!) but temperatures aloft warm more and there isn't any drivers showing up to promote much in storms, at least strong storms. 

So it might just end up being mostly cloudy to cloudy much of the time , warm, and very muggy. Granted, beyond Thursday-Friday time frame is too far out to draw to any conclusions at this point.

An interesting point,  at least as far as the GFS model is concerned, and granted there are many other models out there  all showing different things (this isn't written in stone), is that the largest rainfall totals this coming week will be right over where the worst drought conditions are respectively.

The DEEP TROPICAL INSANITY (moisture wise) is shown to pull out NEXT MONDAY for several days, but then re-emerge several days later in association with another 'potential' tropical low near the Florida Straits.

Long story short, climatological 'summer' is definitely on the way for real this week and it looks like a big dent is going to be put in the drought conditions. That's the big story for now.

Florida 'Summer Wet Season' on The Way Next Week!

 It's looking more and more now (on a consistent basis across model runs and various models) that the 'Official Start to The Florida Wet Season' will be on its way early to mid week next week in the June 10th to June 12th time frame.

What that means (from the bloggers perspective) is that the overall atmospheric moisture content (precipitable water)(moisture available to produces rain and clouds) from the surface up through 20,000 feet will increase appreciably and noticeably, with values almost consistent at or above 1.75"  (in winter it is often below 0.50"). 

This will also mean an increase in dew point temperatures (readings in the mid-upper 70Fs almost all the time), which means much higher heat index values with that real muggy feel to the air morning, noon, and night. 

With increased atmospheric moisture comes greater instability combined with the high sun angle (and heat) which helps the sea breeze circulation (convection oven) get baking putting the afternoon thunderstorms machine in high gear.

 Thunderstorm intensity determined by how cold the air is well aloft as well as how strong the winds aloft are. Typically in the summer there is very little to no wind shear (no strong) winds, so the primary driver on storm intensity is the temperatures aloft (the colder they are the more ferocious the storms can be) as well as what type of boundary collision occurs at the surface.

 As it is, the temperatures  aloft will not be unusually cold next week, so we will be looking at 'typical activity' but there may still be some stronger storms mainly late day/early evening where there is multiple boundary collisions converging together which results in greater upward forcing. 

These 'boundaries' are a combination of the east/west coast sea breezes combined with lake breeze boundaries PLUS outflow boundaries produced from the result of outflow from showers/storms that form earlier in the day coming together.

The rain is needed though as currently most of Central and South Florida are in varying degrees of drought, so not a minute too soon!

What this all means is that we are generally right on schedule. The 'Wet Season' can begin as soon as the last week in May to as late as the third week in June (typically). With the atmospheric moisture increase comes increased humidity, but also an increase on rain/thunderstorm activity driven by lake and sea breezes normally (but not always). It also means that with increased cloud coverage the unusually hot temperatures we've been seeing lately (mostly inland) will go down a bit closer to 'normal'.

As we might expect this time of year, tropical activity will begin to wave its flag primarily in the Gulf of Mexico and western Caribbean region. The Atlantic Hurricane Season doesn't really get going until mid-late August and is 'typically' VERY quiet in July. But June is known for some big storms in Gulf of Mexico, and already model guidance is hinting at various times and locations that s tropical storm might develop in the next two weeks 'somewhere'. Even a hurricane or tropical storm can be threat without a direct hit, because when storms move up from the south, west of the state, the tornado risk might be increased.