Orlando, FL – We’ve been plagued by a consistent and stubborn feed of tropical moisture out of the east across the peninsula of Florida the last several days.
Intermittent sunshine broke through earlier today, before the clouds built in and the stream of heavy rains started to pile up.
The flood watch across our east coast, through Volusia and Brevard counties, was extended by the National Weather Service into your Monday evening. Monday looks to bring us some of the largest rainfall totals from this set up before we finally start to tone it down.
For what’s left out there tonight, some areas could see some downpours resulting in flood advisories being issued. We have one currently valid already for our folks out in Osceola County after an enormous push of big time rains came across the county earlier this evening.
Tomorrow we could see much of the same, especially since portions of Volusia, Brevard, Seminole, Orange, Osceola, and upper Polk counties grounds are so saturated at this point. Water just doesn’t have anywhere else to go in the near distant future.
But, just over the hill and through the woods we have some dry air that’s going to attempt to build in, especially through the mid-levels of our atmosphere overhead.
Off the east coast in the western Atlantic is a large pocket of drying that came off the Mid-Atlantic coast and will eventually be funneled down across us by the same high pressure driving this corridor of tropical moisture and high winds through our area.
Tuesday and especially Wednesday our skies will start to clear, and rains will taper off pretty good. During pivotal portions of the day, first thing in the morning and during your afternoon commute, impacts will be far less than what we’ve observed since Friday and through this weekend.
Speaking of “tropical”, in the tropics we have newly designated Invest 95L. It looks to become our next named storm, Jerry, in the next few days. Thankfully, it’s once again forecast to curve north into the Central Atlantic staying far away from us.
Our friends in the northeast Caribbean islands will have to track the progress of this next system closely into the new week ahead.
Then we’ve got big news on the horizon! Next weekend could look vastly different than tonight.
Our first push of fall-like air is going to try to come down. A lot hinges on whether or not we see an area of low pressure start to develop off our immediate east coastline (not tropical).
As that spin gets underway as projected by our models, it will help to drag down even more cooler, drier air from up north. Right now data suggests we may see at least a three to five degree temperature drop in the afternoon for many of us into next Saturday and Sunday.
The euro model, for example, puts our afternoon high temps in the upper 70s and low 80s! I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, but that would be pretty stellar news after the deluge we’ve experienced out of the east.
The American model keeps us a tad warmer, with most of us sticking around the low 80s on both Saturday and Sunday. Next Sunday appears to be our potentially coolest day in a long while. A sure fire sign October is here, and fall will eventually show itself in Central Florida despite the bit of a lag occurring thus far.