Zeta strengthens moving into Gulf but for Central Florida it’s all about heat for Halloween

ORLANDO. Fla. – What a day! If you loved Saturday’s weather, you will love today. Central Florida will be mostly dry and HOT!

We are pinpointing newly formed Tropical Storm Zeta.

As of the 2 a.m. advisory from the National Hurricane Center Zeta gained strength and intensity as it continues to move about 300 miles south south east of the western tip of Cuba.

Zeta will likely stay a tropical storm before briefly intensifying to a Category 1 hurricane before making a landfall on top of Cancun Monday into Tuesday.

Maximum sustained winds are at 40 mph and Tropical Storm Zeta is only moving north at 1 mph. While Zeta remains fairly stationary for the next few hours it will begin to make a move to the north closer to the Yucatán Peninsula late Sunday and into Monday morning.

The track has been consistent with the models of Zeta. The 5 a.m. track keeps Zeta in the central and eventually northern Gulf of Mexico through the middle and end of next week.

Zeta will likely stay a category one hurricane with winds near 75 mph through the middle of the week as it reaches the middle and the northern Gulf of Mexico.

It looks like Zeta could make a landfall anywhere from the central Louisiana coast to the far western panhandle of Florida sometime early Thursday morning or even late Wednesday.

Zeta will not have a direct impact on Florida.

CHURNING WATERS MEAN RIP TIDES

We are also watching Hurricane Epsilon.

The storm has maximum sustained winds of 75 mph. It will likely weekend considerably in the coming hours as it stays away from Canada and certainly away from the U.S.

Because we have seen so much churning in the ocean waters, we will continue to see rip currents and high surf along our coast line for the next couple of days.

There’s a small craft advisory in effect for all of our coast until late Sunday morning. Of course rip currents could lead to several rescues at the beach Sunday and Monday and there is a concern for boaters as seas will be up to about 7 feet off of our coast.

Other than issues at the coast we will have a spectacular few days in store.

Expect only a few scattered showers with a 30% coverage of rain Sunday through Wednesday. We will continue with a slight chance for rain at 20% on Thursday with high temperatures every day Monday through next Thursday in the upper 80s near 90.

Saturday in Orlando we had a high temperature of 86 degrees. The record high for Oct. 24 it was 94 set back in 1919. The normal high for today’s date of Oct. 25 is 83.

There was no official rain yesterday putting our surplus since Jan. 1 at 1.50 inches.

Since Sept. 1 we have a surplus of 4.51 inches.

Because we haven’t seen a ton of rainfall for the past couple of days, we have a deficit since the beginning of October of .17 inches.

We will remain well above our normal high of 83 all next week with temperatures near 90 and feels like temperatures in the mid 90s. Highs will be in the low and mid 80s with slight rain for Halloween.