Here’s why the weather has been so active in Central Florida

Damaging hail, funnel clouds reported in Orlando area

ORLANDO, Fla. – After a long and quiet stretch across Central Florida, the weather has turned extremely active.

We’ve seen isolated heating-of-the day storms to date this spring, but the storms of the past week have been on another level.

But why?

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Tuesday and Wednesday saw extremely large hail.

Temperatures at 5,000-20,000 feet above the ground were abnormally cold. Combined with strong instability from the heating-of-the-day, storms that were triggered by the east and west coast sea breezes were able to produce extremely large hail, on the order of golf balls to even baseballs.

The reason why the hail was so large had everything to do with the colder-than-normal temperatures in the mid-levels of the atmosphere.

While rare, if Florida is to see destructive hail, it’s in the early spring.

Click here to read more on how hail grows.

Thursday was a little different setup.

While the mid-levels of our atmosphere warmed up a little bit, it was still plenty cold to support large hail growth.

The other difference was that the west coast sea breeze was dominant, meaning the storms fired along and around I-75 and marched east.

The east coast sea breeze also fired storms along it near the I-95 corridor. This boundary, however, largely remained pinned closer to the Atlantic coast.

East of Orlando and near I-95, the two sea breezes collided. Winds at the surface along the east coast sea breeze boundary were out of the southeast, providing the low-level spin necessary to begin tornado development.

Four tornado warnings were issued by the National Weather Service in this area Thursday night. Two funnel clouds were reported in two separate storms, one near Rockledge and the other near Playalinda Beach.

More storms are expected through the weekend, but next week is looking much better.

Stay safe!


About the Author:

Jonathan Kegges joined the News 6 team in June 2019 and now covers weather on TV and all digital platforms.

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