ORLANDO, Fla. – If you have weekend plans, listen up: Rain is on the way.
I hope you took my advice earlier in the week and bought a new umbrella. You will definitely need it in the coming days as the tropics are fired up.
We will see a 60% chance of rain Friday and a 70% chance Saturday. Rain chances remain high through next week with on and off scattered showers in the afternoon. Some of the storms will be based on the sea breezes firing up and coming together.
Plenty of tropical moisture is in place, helping the sea breezes to produce heavy rainfall each afternoon.
Expect a high in the upper 80s and low 90s for the next few days in the Orlando area. The normal high on this date is 90. The record high is 98, set in 1920.
Pinpointing the tropics
Tropical Storm Paulette, located over the central tropical Atlantic, and Tropical Storm Rene, in the eastern tropical Atlantic, will stay away from the United States.
Back close to home, a large area of disorganized showers and thunderstorms extending from near the Central and Northwest Bahamas eastward over the western Atlantic for a few hundred miles is associated with a surface trough of low pressure.This system will increase rain for Florida, but it will likely not develop until it moves into the Gulf and away from the Sunshine State, if it develops at all.
This system is forecast to move westward, crossing the Bahamas and Florida later Friday and moving into the eastern Gulf of Mexico over the weekend. Upper-level winds are expected to become more conducive for development, and a tropical depression could form while this system moves slowly west-northwest over the eastern Gulf of Mexico early next week. Regardless of development, the system is expected to produce locally heavy rainfall over portions of South Florida and the Keys during the next couple of days.
The National Hurricane Center is giving this low a 20% chance of development within the next two days and a 50% chance within the next five days.
Another trough of low pressure, located over the north-central Gulf of Mexico, is moving away from Florida.
Although the associated shower and thunderstorm activity is currently minimal, some slow development of the system is possible while it moves west and then southwest over the northern and western Gulf of Mexico through early next week.
Formation chances through the next five days is 30%.
Meanwhile, a tropical wave located a few hundred miles south-southeast of the Cabo Verde Islands is producing a large area of disorganized showers and thunderstorms.
Gradual development of this system is forecast, and a tropical depression is expected to form within the next few days while the system moves west across the eastern and central tropical Atlantic.
The NHC says there’s a 90% chance it develops into a tropical system.
And yet another tropical wave is forecast to emerge off the west coast of Africa this weekend.
The next named storm will be Sally.