I'm watching a potent upper level disturbance that this morning is spinning across central Texas. Usually, you'd think this system would be a couple of days away from SWFL but this year has been anything but usual! The jet stream is very active across the Gulf as it has been most of the winter; this means that systems move very quickly across the Gulf and, this time, rain will be approaching the coast around daybreak tomorrow.
There are a couple of red flags tomorrow with respect to the possibility of severe weather. Most importantly is there will be quite a bit of wind shear in the lower levels of the atmosphere.. first directional (where the wind direction changes rapidly with height), then speed (when the wind speed, not direction, changes with height). This can lead to low level rotation in storms. Secondly, and associated with the first "red flag," is the presence of a strong low level jet stream. Just above the ground, the wind tomorrow morning will be racing out of the southwest at better than 60 mph. This tells me that, at the very least, any storms tomorrow will have the possibility of some very strong, gusty wind.
But there are some limiting factors for tomorrow's potential t-storm threat! First is the timing.. the line will be coming through well before the "maximum heating" of the day, when the atmosphere is usually at its most unstable. In fact, it's possible the low levels will remain stable enough to really preclude any strong t-storm chance here (one of our models says yes to this, another says no). Another is the amount of low level moisture that will return ahead of the front. Moisture is what helps fuel these thunderstorms as they approach and right now, the atmosphere is really dry. The final factor is the upper level energy will be lifting to the north and away from south Florida as it approaches.. this likely means the strongest of any storms would actually be located more into central Florida.
So right now, while I think the potential is there for one or two gustier storms... I don't think we'll see widespread strong to severe storms in SWFL. Of course, you'll want to stay tuned to WINK and 6 TV today and tomorrow morning as we get new model information!
Brian
