South Florida May Precipitation

[cyclonaut]

With all the talk lately of dry Mays in South Fla. linked to a increase likelyhood of hurricane hits later on in the season, lets use this thread to keep track of who is & who is'nt getting rainfall across South Florida in May..People from The Florida Keys up to Palm Beach can report here occasionally & keep us up to date on how much or more importantly how little rain has fallen..If its a dry May we can then wait & see what takes place down the line as far as any potential threats from hurricanes.It would be interesting to read all of your insights as the month moves along.

[StormChasr]

The "dry May" is another hypothesis that remains to be proved or disproved. My guess is that we will have to wait and see if it is 1) and active season (statistically likely), and 2) is it an active LANDFALLING season (anybody's guess), and 3) will it be Florida, or some other area (totally unknown, and remains to be seen).

[cyclonaut]

I know, it just something to do for fun.

[gatorcane]

I'm not quite sure why people concentrate on a dry "May." While this was true last year for South Florida along the east coast we must not forget that the West Coast of Florida saw lots of rain in May. Actually the west coast got into a summer-time August-like pattern in mid-May in 2004 with East-west coast seabreeze convergence that took place along the west coast with general storm movement off to the west and northwest.

What we saw in May last year was a strong ridge that extended across South Florida that caused an abnormally strong East and Southeast windflow. This flow generally keeps thunderstorm activity well west of the East coast and keeps the activity along the west coast. Typically in May we see W or SW winds that push storms from the Everglades to the East coast. The east wind pattern sets up more in July-September. Sometimes troughs that come far south also fuel the storms. None of that was seen in May last year.

What's abnormal about last year is that we saw the strong East windflow persist all summer that brought plenty of tropical rains to the west coast. In fact the flow was so strong that the west coast seabreeze often times was overpowered by the east winds and this is highly unusual.

Clearly what this indicated was that we were going to see strong ridging in the western Atlantic for most of the summer. Look what happened. All 4 Hurricanes that hit FL went around this ridge and were brought in by the strong East low and mid-level winds.

If May is rainier with less of a pronounced East wind, I expect that we may not see such strong ridging we saw last year. We will see periods of time with ridging but the chances of a hurricane in the Atlantic being in the right spot when this ridging occurs is lower (but not out of the question). The chances of a GOM or Caribbean storm are higher.

[cyclonaut]

I did'nt make this dry May thing up.Some well respected scientists came up with this so its worth following though it might turn out to be nothing.

[cyclonaut]

The 1st day of May begins with a good chance of rain.

Sunday: A slight chance of showers, then showers and thunderstorms likely after 2pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high around 88. South wind between 10 and 13 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%.

Sunday Night: Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly before 8pm. Mostly cloudy, with a low near 70. North wind around 7 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%.

[cyclonaut]

Will the blop make it to South Fla & bring measurable precip or will it dry up like the 1st one.....

[Scorpion]

Looks like its gonna miss us .

[gatorcane]

It might, we need to wait through tomorrow to see what happens. The low feature in the Eastern Gulf is actually creating a warm front out ahead of it keeping the tropical airmass in place (most weathermaps won't show this, however).

Rain or no Rain for South Florida, keep in mind that we don't have a strong Bermuda high feature that we are looking for to develop in May. That is the reason why South Florida would stay dry. This cold front is a bit far south which shows ridge breaking down. Good news for South Florida although we need to wait through the end of May. Things can change quickly

FXUS62 KMFL 020145 AAB
AFDMFL

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MIAMI FL
940 PM EDT SUN MAY 1 2005

.UPDATED...ANOTHER MCS HAS DEVELOPED OVER THE SOUTHERN GULF OF MEXICO THIS EVENING...AS A WEAK LOW PRESSURE DEVELOPED IN THE EASTERN GULF OF MEXICO WEST OF TAMPA ALONG THE COLD FRONT. IN TURN...THE COLD FRONT EAST OF THE LOW HAS TURNED INTO A WARM FRONT OVER SOUTH CENTRAL FLORIDA THIS EVENING WITH SCATTERED SHOWERS ALONG THE FRONT.

THE WEAK LOW WILL MOVE SLOWLY NORTHEAST THROUGH CENTRAL FLORIDA TONIGHT TAKING THE WARM FRONT NORTHEAST...WHILE THE MCS SLOWLY MOVES SOUTH TO SOUTHEAST TOWARDS CUBA. THE COMBINATION OF THE MOVEMENT OF THE LOW AND THE MCS WILL PULL THE COLD FRONT OVER THE EASTERN GULF OF MEXICO SOUTHEAST TOWARDS SOUTH FLORIDA TONIGHT. THEREFORE...THE TROPICAL AIRMASS WILL REMAIN IN PLACE OVER SOUTH FLORIDA OVERNIGHT...AND ALLOW FOR THE PWAT TO INCREASE FROM 1.50 INCHES THIS EVENING TO CLOSE TO 2 INCHES BY MONDAY MORNING.

SO HAVE INCREASE THE POPS TONIGHT OVER THE CWA TO CHANCE CAT ALONG WITH A FEW THUNDERSTORMS ALONG THE WEST COAST...AND THEN A CHANCE OF SHOWERS AND ISOLATED
THUNDERSTORMS ON MONDAY DUE TO THE HIGH PWAT'S AND THE COLD FRONT MOVING THROUGH THE CWA.

[Windtalker]

Will the blop make it to South Fla & bring measurable precip or will it dry up like the 1st one.....

Here in Hollywood FL, We haven't had any rain to speak of for a long long time.

[cyclonaut]

Well I sure did not recieved a single drop of rain yesterday even though precip chances were 60% here in the Miami area.There is going to be either a 30 - 40 % chance of precip for most of this week so lets see what happens.

[boca]

same here in S palm beach county not a drop.

[Lindaloo]

Here in MS, we received over 3 inches of rain Saturday.

[cyclonaut]

Tell you all what if we dont squeeze something out of this which appears to be fizzling by the hour we then have to wait to mid month for the next good rain chance.

[gatorcane]

Not good news for South Floridians, this was our best chance of rain for a while. All long term models keep South Florida dry for the extended forecast. I stepped outside for lunch here in East Boca. It's also starting to get hot

[gatorcane]

my prediction, we'll start to see some good ridging take place within the next couple of weeks and it will become more pronounced in late May. I expect very little rain as the E and SE windflow starts to take effect here in South Florida.

[StormChasr]

Vicious T-storms in the Daytona area the last few days, and more forecasted for the future--all week long.

[cyclonaut]

Vicious T-storms in the Daytona area the last few days, and more forecasted for the future--all week long.

Its been the opposite here.I never saw a bow echo fizzle like the one I saw yeasterday just as it passed Naples.& then the next batch dissipated as well.

[cyclonaut]

[Scorpion]

Rained like crazy here in North County. At least an inch. Also very hot and humid today.