Spigot will slowly turn off mid week

Sometimes, I should just keep quiet. I had the right idea almost two weeks ago when I mentioned that we should be in for a mid-month spell of deep tropical moisture with its almost daily deluges. When it materialized a few days earlier than expected, I saw some trends that made me think it would tail off starting today before going dry mid-week. Not totally correct.

As I’ll explain in my discussion, there’s some solid reasons why we’re in a wet pattern and I expect that to hold through Wednesday, then start to break down on Thursday. Friday-Sunday should feature much fewer showers and higher temperatures.

The Foreca graphic underestimates the high temperatures - my text shows what I think typical Northshore and Coastal MS highs and lows should be.

Mid-day and afternoon shower and thunderstorm probabilities remain high, greater than 60% through Thursday. Locations right on the beach in Harrison or Hancock Counties could see early morning showers. Amounts could be down a bit from what we’ve seen in the last week. If you get the rain, a half-inch or less should be typical with a few spots getting an inch.

The graphic below explains why. Weak onshore flow at the low levels (Green arrow) plus an upper level trough giving us divergent (spreading) upper level winds (blue arrow). This favors upward motion for greater than normal showers. It also keeps the showers developing and moving, so the rainfall totals don’t get out of hand.

Good news is that shower chances should go down on Thursday and be quite noticeably less Friday-Sunday. The next graphic showing the forecast flow Thursday evening from the European model explains why. Onshore flow (green arrow) practically disappears as it gets shunted west towards Texas. Meanwhile, we get under an upper level ridge (blue arrows run in a circle) Though you can’t rule out a few weak afternoon showers and storms near where the sea breeze runs out of energy, chances and amounts should be much less. 20-30%? With more sun…High temperatures should climb a few degrees into the low 90s, mid 90s in some inland areas.

Expect 2-3 dry days Good things must come to an end. After a drier period Thursday - next Monday, shower chances should increase again by Tuesday June 24.

I was pleased to see that some Orlando TV meteorologists that I respect have almost the same take on hurricane season that I do. Overall, they see a slightly above average season, but it’s their location analysis that I particularly agree with. They see higher than usual chances of getting a storm in the Bermuda triangle (let me call it polygon) area from Puerto Rico to Bermuda to the Carolinas down to the Bahamas. The Bermuda High will be weak this year, so the major storm track will be there, however….

The Bermuda High is not static, but builds in and moves out each week. So, they expect Peninsula Florida (Tallahassee and south) to get threatened by one of two storms when the High builds to the west a bit. Below normal chances exist in Texas, which puts us in between with a fair-to-middlin’ chance. Their concern, and mine, is that if something develops in the Southern Gulf and meanders this way in August or early Sept., rapid intensification is possible just offshore since ideal conditions would exist further north than usual in the Gulf. That makes for more difficult forecasting than usual.

Foreca graphic for Pensacola Beach shows some wet weather early with scattered storms through Thursday (like here), but then nice beach weather for next weekend.