Shabby Depression to form E of FL

Geesh…..the hype. Someone reached out to me yesterday concerned about “The Storm” and their trip to the beach. It wasn’t a storm then, isn’t one now - just a bunch of thunderstorms heading east across North Florida. See the satellite image centered on Florida below. A tropical depression is likely to form somewhere near my arrow as the storms cross the peninsula and ends up east of Jacksonville tomorrow.

All models show it heading north spreading rain up the Carolina coast over the next 3 days. Given the way the National Hurricane Center names almost anything, my guess is that this will be named a tropical storm and some poor sole with a Home Depot anemometer who thinks he’s Jim Cantore might measure a 40 mph gust on the beach. In short, this won’t impact us on the Gulf and it won’t be a big deal anywhere.

Around here, our humid “dry spell” (remember it’s dry at 10,000 feet) will last through Saturday cutting off rainfall with mid 90s as highs. Then, from Sunday through the work week, it’s typical summer as mid level moisture returns. I don’t expect last week’s daily deluge (I did get over 4” as forecast a week ago), but I think most of us on the Northshore and in South Mississippi will see three showers or storms at some point, giving us about an inch from Sunday afternoon through next Saturday.

The Foreca graphic overdoes the rainfall for the next few days. On the fourth, I do expect some scattered showers and storms, but these should be confined to the River Parishes and areas west of Hammond. Otherwise, it’s a hot Fourth and Fifth.

Shower and thunderstorm chances creep back in on Sunday afternoon, but they seem more likely in the Gulfport-Biloxi area, Slidell, and New Orleans. Monday’s chances look above normal - maybe 50-60%. Then, things settle down to a more typical 30% afternoon and evening scattered thunderstorm affair — mainly within 20 miles of the Lake and Sound. I don’t think there’s as much push to move them way inland like last week. High temperatures will drop a few degrees for most us, except for those inland.

Expect shower and thunderstorm chances to pick up as we get towards next weekend and mid July. The European model is strengthening the Bermuda High and pushing moisture and instability westward into the Gulf. Hard to say what areas will get heavy rains at this point - but remember that it’s July where 6-8” of rain often falls.

Foreca graphic for Pensacola Beach shows a really nice weekend as I mentioned, then the scattered daily storms from Monday on. Still — a really nice stretch of weather. THEN…It really picks up on that rainfall arriving from the east next Friday. Looks quite reasonable to me.