Wet Thurs, 50-50 Friday, then nice

Our upper level low that will provide the lift needed to turn the moisture into showers has been delayed. This means that tomorrow, Wednesday, will not be as bad as forecast. Scattered showers should hold off until almost the evening hours. Then, that low will be forced northeastward pushing showers and storms into our area early Thursday. I’m not as convinced that we’ll see significant rains - maybe a half inch for many of us, and inch for a lucky few. That support will be east of us on Friday when the cold front arrives, so only a 50-50 chance of scattered lighter showers.

Saturday and Sunday will be delightful with lower humidity - lows low to mid 60s on the Northshore with highs mid 80s. That’s about like a nice summer day in New York.

Then, after that, its waiting on the tropics. Models are flashing signs of development in the Western Caribbean or Southern Gulf to reinforce the idea that the pattern is ripe for an early season storm. More on this in the long-range section.

Agree with the Foreca time line which is based largely on European modeling. Notice their downplaying of the rain on Wednesday, the rain on Thursday with rain-cooled temperatures, and the spotty light rain late on Friday with the cool front.

The weekend looks great with lows low-mid 60s and highs mid 80s. Humidity returns for Monday but rain chances wait until Wednesday and Thursday when deep tropical moisture arrives.

Expect some wet weather with tropical downpours beginning either a week from Wednesday June 3, or more likely June 4 and lasting for three days. The challenge will be forecasting when any depression or tropical storm could develop with this surge of northward moving moisture.

The ECMWF European model tries to develop a wave on this moisture axis (or inverted trough) on about June 4 or 5 as it heads northwest (see below). We often see lopsided tropical depressions or storms like this in June. They bring heavy rain on the east side but often can’t develop much because of all the drier air on the west side. So this solution makes sense to me, though it seems about a day too fast. Translation: Not much of any impact except for the Gulf Coast except a lot of rain on the east side.

On the other hand, the American GFS waits for this initial surge of tropical moisture before trying to develop a genuine symmetrical tropical storm behind it to its east sometime in the June 9-11 time frame. Location and timing have been inconsistent. The GFS actually does better at identifying the potential for development and initial locations than the ECMWF, so it’s wait and see.

This might seem strange to you in that the potential for an early season storm was recognized weeks ago, but the location and timing haven’t come into focus yet. That’s often the case in tropical meteorology where pattern recognition techniques spot things a few weeks ahead of time, but modeling lacks the upper air data over the tropical oceans (and even Mexico) to bring things into sharper focus. Finally, it’s often cloud scale processes that determine exactly where and when a storm forms. One thunderstorm could put down a downdraft and cut off updrafts of other thunderstorms, delaying the development of a depression for 12 hours and 100 miles — that’s why I believe in prayer. There are little things like this that are beyond our knowledge that make big differences.

Foreca graphic for Pensacola Beach shows pretty much the same thing except for more rain in the next three days. Otherwise, Saturday - Tuesday look great and when return flow from Gulf arrives on Wednesday, the bulk of the showers will probably go west of them.