Sunday, May 20, 2018

Rain Chances On Increase...

After Friday’s gully washer, we’ve “enjoyed” 2 dry days allowing the ground to recover from 3-6” of rain.   Tonight’s satellite loops show a weak upper low centered just south of Panama City, FL. Moving little.   We are currently on the dry side of this system but it is expected to slowly shift westward this week.   A surge of tropical rains are rotating around the eastern side and will be across the Florida beaches by daybreak.  IF the upper low doesn’t make much progress our way, Monday could be another mostly dry day.   However, models continue to indicate a rather deep upper tough will develop over the Southeast & northern Gulf and that should result in higher rain chances as we head towards next weekend.  Several models (Canadian, Euro) develop a storm in the Gulf by Friday with the Canadian taking the center  towards Mobile Bay while the Euro brings it just to our west.   The Euro is the far wetter model run for us.  What about the GFS (American) model?  Well, it doesn’t show any development unlike the past several days indicating a storm would form.  Bottom line, we are still in May with water temps only marginally supportive of tropical development, but more importantly, the upper trough would make it difficult for a strong system to develop as wind shear would be a factor.    What might happen is a weak low could form often referred to as “sub-tropical” (cold core) and slowly meander across the northern Gulf by late week.   NHC is not talking about it in their 5 day outlook and it’s just something to pay attention to for later this week.   On average, a named storm forms once every third year during May.  However, the last 3 years in a row we’ve seen storms form before June 1st.  This could make it four in a row.   Early named storms doesn’t mean it will be an active season.    It’s just that we don’t need/like to get nervous  before the heart (August-September) of the season when the big/major hurricanes usually develop.  Stay tuned!

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