Our weather pattern change is underway & will include more numerous showers & storms the rest of this week, especially inland. Onshore east to southeast winds will take over Thu. through the weekend which will promote scattered showers near the coast & beaches in the morning then showers & storms will increase inland from midday through the afternoon. The clouds & high humidity with rain at times will take a bit of an edge off the temps. with highs in the upper 80s at the beaches to low 90s inland but humidity will be sky high. Radar imagery below courtesy the S. Fl. Water Management District:
Storms Tue. were scattered but locally heavy. The first photo below is from David Roberts, San Jose where a tree was dropped by strong t'storm winds....Shawn Leary, S'side Jax, & the last photo is from Mike Baker, Jax.
The Sterling, Virginia N.W.S. has issued a summary on the derecho phenomenon that occurred nearly 2 weeks ago. Electricity is still out in some areas! Click here for the summary from Steven Zubrick, Science & Operations Manager. The map below -- from the Storm Prediction Center -- shows the frequency of derechos across the U.S. Such events are rare on the First Coast.
The equatorial Pacific continues to show signs of warming which gives credence to the notion that an El Nino may be in the offing. It's possible that this is a relatively short term, almost reactionary response to the signficant back-to-back La Nina's (cooling of the equatorial Pacific). If true, the hurricane season could show a fairly low number of storms in the Atlantic Basin -- compared to avg. -- for the last third to half of the season. We're already seeing signs of an increase in mid & upper level shear over the Atlantic Basin -- a hallmark of El Nino conditions. The map below shows the above avg. sea surface temps. extending west from S. America in the Pacific...the second diagram is the by models -- many of which indicate a developing El Nino that peak this fall into early winter. If accurate, the upshot is a lower number of tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Basin (but has little to do with intensity - remember "Andrew") + a wet winter for the First Coast. Click here for a discussion by NOAA.
