Who Stopped the Rain?

Its been a long time since we had measurable rain on the east side of the central Florida peninsula. As the rainy season draws to a close our chances for significant rain drop exponentially. Our lakes remain dry and we continue to irrigate daily to try and save some of the flora.

The dry weather has made for some nice sunsets anyway.



Today surface winds are rising over the Gulf of Mexico in advance of the approach of a tropical wave currently over the Western Caribbean, western tip of Cuba, and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. This wave is headed west-northwest at 10 - 15 mph, and is under a high 20 - 30 knots of wind shear.



While the tropical wave makes for a moist atmosphere it also at times hampers our rain chances. When there are high clouds the surface is slow to heat (relatively speaking) and storms do not form (above).



The wave is slowly beginning to build an increased amount of heavy thunderstorms, and this process will accelerate on Thursday when the wave enters the Gulf of Mexico. By Friday, when the wave will be near the Louisiana or Texas coast, wind shear is expected to drop to low to moderate levels, and the wave may be able to organize into a tropical depression.



This process will likely take several days, and formation of a tropical depression is more likely Saturday or Sunday. The National Hurricane Center is giving the wave just a 10% chance of developing into a tropical depression by Friday morning. Regardless, this system will spread heavy rains to portions of the Gulf Coast by Friday, with the upper Texas coast and the coast of Louisiana the most likely recipients of heavy rain.



Three of the four top computer forecast models for predicting tropical cyclone development predict that a tropical depression will form this weekend or early next week, and it is at least 50% likely we will have Tropical Depression 13 by Monday. However, steering currents will be weak in the Gulf, and it is difficult to predict where the storm might go.

The GFS model has a possible tropical depression forming by Sunday off the coast of Mississippi, then moving east-northeast over the Florida Panhandle on Monday.



The ECMWF model forms the storm on Monday off the coast of Texas, and leaves the storm stalled in the Gulf through Wednesday.

The UKMET model forms the storm Saturday off the coast of Louisiana, and leaves it stalled through Monday. If the storm did remain in the Gulf of Mexico for three days as some of the recent model runs have been predicting, it would be a threat to intensify into a hurricane.



Above: In the current satellite image we are just north of the dense cloud cover over-spreading Florida from the tropical wave in the Gulf.