STORM2K

Got pounded this morning for 2 hours with a heavy rain shower that parked over eastern St. Petersburg just north of Albert whitted airport. It was lovely seeing the heavy rain.

MetroMike wrote:

NDG wrote:Very weird dry spell we are in despite a weak El Nino going on, by this time last year our wet season at least here in central FL was well underway.

I don't think the weak El Nino has any effect on the weather here. Just an ongoing pattern that will eventually break sometime in June most likely.

Yes it does, we had a fairly wet winter/early Spring here in my part of central FL.

Tampa Bay Hurricane wrote:Got pounded this morning for 2 hours with a heavy rain shower that parked over eastern St. Petersburg just north of Albert whitted airport. It was lovely seeing the heavy rain.

Lucky you, my grass is brown as if we just had a freeze

Wow, either my eyes are deceiving me and this is just a mirage in the new Desertification of South Florida regime we seem to be in, or a nice little convective cell has initiated in far NW Miami-Dade.

It's not affecting anyone but some alligators and egrets, but hey, at least it's something.

South Florida is becoming the desert SW everything is turning brown and because with have a southeasterly flow if we do manage to get thunderstorms they will get pushed westward away from the coast. Their is no winning here.

NDG wrote:

MetroMike wrote:

NDG wrote:Very weird dry spell we are in despite a weak El Nino going on, by this time last year our wet season at least here in central FL was well underway.

I don't think the weak El Nino has any effect on the weather here. Just an ongoing pattern that will eventually break sometime in June most likely.

Yes it does, we had a fairly wet winter/early Spring here in my part of central FL.

Correct that the Winter/Early spring was fairly wet, but El Nino's have the most effect in Florida those times of year.
Not so much late Spring and so forth.

Yet while most of Florida is dry and hot, there's been a persistent moisture focus over north central Florida from Citrus to Sumter to Marion counties with recurring rainfall over the past 4-5 days. This morning there's been a line of showers/storms focused over Citrus that's trained or stayed in place giving some spots over 3 inches already today.

It's nice to see something on radar other than smoke plumes. A few days ago we couldn't buy a cloud so we're making progress. High temps have pulled back a bit and dewpoints are up...summer rainy season can be delayed but I've yet to see it denied..

psyclone wrote:It's nice to see something on radar other than smoke plumes. A few days ago we couldn't buy a cloud so we're making progress. High temps have pulled back a bit and dewpoints are up...summer rainy season can be delayed but I've yet to see it denied..

There is something on the radar? I had given up looking last few weeks.

Got a trace of rain yesterday at my locale near the coast. Today NWS has rain chances at 20%. Seems a bit low but we will see. Given the light steering, near record heat, and a decaying trough in the region, I am optimistic we will get some measurable rainfall today. The last few runs of the HRRR are actually showing some decent rainfall for my locale developing later today.

gatorcane wrote:Got a trace of rain yesterday at my locale near the coast. Today NWS has rain chances at 20%. Seems a bit low but we will see. Given the light steering, near record heat, and a decaying trough in the region, I am optimistic we will get some measurable rainfall today. The last few runs of the HRRR are actually showing some decent rainfall for my locale developing later today.

On the other side of PBC we managed to pick around an inch and a half of rainfall yesterday afternoon(1.52)! Was nice to see a decent afternoon summertime thunderstorm drift SE into NE PBC, what better way to kick off the first meteorological day of Summer.

Yeah TheStormExpert saw those storms up that way. Hoping to get something like that here. Looks like a light west steering flow with storm development today which should steer storms back towards the east coast. Radar is starting to light up. Still thinking east coast metro areas of South Florida have a shot of good rain today, we will see.

Well, another scorcher in Northeast Florida today. No rain yet again today. I checked my thermometer and it peaked at 99.4 degrees. I am not sure if it reached 100 at the NWS Jax office, but it sure will be close. This is the 9th consecutive day of 95 degree plus temperatures, with 5 of these particular days being 98 degrees or better at my home station, including today. It has reached 100 here once (last Monday it reached 101 here). I have had enough of this searing heat. The only saving grace is that we have not had the oppressive humidity values for most of this heat wave period.

It has been an impressive early season heat wave for sure, and we will have one more hot day to deal with here in Jax area tomorrow with temps expected to reach into the upper 90s. Hopefully, the Upper Ridge, which has been parked over our region seemingly forever, will retreat some during the next week and bring first an east/southeast flow, and late in the week, more of a southerly flow to enhance moisture return back across the peninsula. This also will hopefully, at least for the immediate short term, put an end to these extremely hot/ at times record breaking heat. Latest forecast show lower 90s beginning Tuesday here. Hey, I will take anything to lessen the heat... We need the rain badly with the wildfire risk running extremely high here and to just break this desert-like pattern we have had over the region for more than the past two weeks now.

Latest model guidance are indeed showing the Upper Ridge axis retreating to the east and northeast, thus this will allow moisture return gradually back across the peninsula. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

___________-


EDIT: JAX NWS WFO maxed out at 98 degrees today. The record for today's date was 100 degrees, so no record today officially.

A strong thunderstorm is currently in my county, but it looks to be tracking slightly south of where I am, so I'm not sure if I will get any rain.

It is really a perfect case/ or example of the "isolated thunderstorms" in a forecast, and if you are extremely lucky to get underneath one of them because they are slow moving. It happened to me late last week when I had over an inch and a half drop on my locale in an isolated storm, and yet all areas north and west of me did not see a drop a rain. Hopefully, our chances of rain will get better later this week, which I discussed in my earlier post on this page.

Indeed looks like we had good coverage of rain across metro SE Florida today particularly Palm Beach County and far southern Dade. That 20% from NWS did seem too low given the pattern. Looks like it ended up more like 70%. I got enough rain to get the lawn green again, just to my west in Central Boca looks like they really cashed in.

last year in late September I noted that never before had I observed Gulf water temps so warm so late in the year. Flash forward to today and this year I have never observed water so warm so early. the water in the surf zone is 88-90 thanks to persistent hot, sunny and rain free conditions. In both cases we have our increasingly frequent and long term visitor to thank....the southeast ridge. it looks like we should get a southeast flow to set up later this week which could yield a celebration worthy sound of thunder on the west coast. We are really crunchy here but at least someone is getting some rain now...so we're turning the corner

Even given a NW steering flow, I got nothing. There was a broken line approaching in the early evening from the Everglades, but as soon as it got to about 8 miles away, it looked on radar like it was being pulled apart like a slug of taffy. It dissipated and the Miami area got absolutely nothing. Don't know why this area continues to be so dry.

Just watch, in about 3 weeks we are going to start talking about SAL intrusions as we usually do in late June and early July, that'll be the next excuse for continued dry weather.

99.3 degrees currently at the home station, and the Jax WFO is reporting 98 degrees and dew point temp of 55. This is truly desert like weather we have had for sure!. Dry heat!

This is the sixth straight day of temps reching at least 98 degrees or higher. We still have about 2 more hours of max diurnal heating. We may indeed see 100 degrees again this afternoon.

Very promising POPs for tomorrow, especially for northern/inland northeast Florida.

I haven't gotten any rain in several weeks. I missed out on both the surprise isolated flooding/severe weather event from a few days back and the isolated thunderstorms from yesterday.