Rain A Good Possiblity - But Storms May Be Lacking

(Infrared satellite imagery depicts the gloom already over the west coast and moving our way, slowly)

Most of the transitional changes have fallen into affect as they had begun in earnest early Friday evening and hit with a whack of 1.3" of rain over night in Cape Canaveral. This morning has begun with cloudy skies and a calm wind. Rain, some heavy at times, blankets much of the extreme western portion of the state, much to the chagrin of those in the Tampa area; hope those 'honey dos' are done, because they are in the muck for much of the morning.

For the east coast: I'm going to slide a glimmer of hope for the 'non-rainy' type folks today and mention right off the bat that the bark of the well advertised wet day to lay ahead might be worse than its bite. The surface boundary, weak and diffuse as it is, lays some where right across the center of the state and is saturated to the gills with moisture at all levels. The problem for the storm lover in me is that the temperature of the air aloft is not very cold and in fact a tad on the warm side at the lower levels, which is not conducive for rapidly rising columns of air (instability) which induces thunderstorms. Additionally, the strongest winds aloft are forecast-ed by weather models to be in the mid-levels then weakening higher up.

So what? This is what. Parcels of air that are trying to rise in an environment not fit for man or beast that encounter these stronger winds will be torn asunder before the can reach the higher, cooler ambient environment higher aloft, leaving them as kindred spirits spread amongst the winds. In other words, wimpy wimpy wimpy. Net affect is when the favored rainy area to the west works its way east toward the coast it is simply torn apart and weakened.

This means we'll have to leave it to the heating of the day and some cloud breaks to get things going with any respectability worth pulling a camera out for. What I foresee is simply a cloudy day...with the rain struggling to get here. It's going to be one those days where one will say "it's going to rain any minute"..and "any minute" can become hours. But once it's here, it will be here to stay for a while.

All things given, I'm thinking that activity along the eastern 1/4 of Central Florida will for the most part hold off until at least noon time..and in some areas as late as 4pm. Whatever activity that develops will be of mostly the 'rain' nature only, and not those horrific lightning and wind storms we all love so dearly. Shame.

The very near future is somewhat bleak for the sun-worshippers, so make those appointments at the tanning salon now. It might be days before there's a period of baking the skin in natural sunlight due to lots of high clouds.

Future Days like Sunday and on: It will be interesting to see what the net affect of what is being foreseen by the models...which should be mentioned..is not at all in agreement amongst those masses. It could be anywhere from rainy to partly cloud and actually pretty nice by Monday depending on which one you want to materialize the most. Unfortunately, the weather seldom is in the business of granting wishes, so we'll have to deal with what we're dealt. So hang in there, get some good video rentals and find some chores to do around the house. It's a good weekend for it.