Above: Rainfall forecast for the 5-day period ending at 8 am EDT Tuesday, October 11, 2011. The storm system affecting Florida this weekend is expected to bring up to 7 inches of rain along the coast. Heavy rains associated with a strong trough of low pressure are also expected to dump 4 - 6 inches of rain over drought-stricken areas of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Image credit: NOAA/HPC. Click on the image to enlarge.
The computer weather forecast models continue to predict a large low pressure system with heavy rain for this weekend. . . it is expected to develop over Cuba and South Florida on Saturday. You wouldn't know it at the moment as the central peninsula of Florida is mostly cloud-free and baking under temperatures in the mid-80°s F. (30° C.) and breezy easterly winds.
The counter-clockwise flow around the developing low should bring strong winds and heavy rains to much of the Florida coast on Saturday, and these conditions should spread northwards to Georgia by Sunday and South Carolina by Monday.
The storm may evolve into a subtropical storm that gets a name by Monday or Tuesday, but the potential location of such a storm is still in question. The extended forecast discussion from NOAA's Hydrometeorological Prediction Center favors a more westerly location, in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, as predicted by the ECMWF model. The GFS model, which puts the storm's center east of Florida, is pushing the weather system that will spawn the subtropical storm too fast to the east. In any case, the exact center location of the storm will not matter that much, since this will be a large, diffuse system that will bring strong winds and heavy rains to a large area of the Southeast U.S. coast, regardless of the exact center location.
Portions of the coastal waters from Southeast Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, as well as from Northeast Florida to South Carolina, are likely to experience sustained winds of 35 - 45 mph Monday and Tuesday. Since the storm is going to get its start as a cold-cored upper-level low pressure system with some dry air aloft, it will probably start out subtropical, with a large band of heavy rain developing well north of the center.
NOTE:Subtropical storms cannot intensify quickly, due to their lack of an organized inner core, and there is little concern at present about this storm potentially becoming a hurricane.
NOTE:Subtropical storms cannot intensify quickly, due to their lack of an organized inner core, and there is little concern at present about this storm potentially becoming a hurricane.
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