ORLANDO, Fla. – Spring officially began per the calendar on March 20, but doesn’t mean we’re done with cold fronts coming across Florida.
In this case, however, Florida will likely receive its next front, without much of the cold, if any at all.
So if you’re a big fan of the heat, there will be plenty of it to go around. This primarily has to do with a new evolution we’re seeing in our general weather pattern across the U.S., at just about every level there is.
Let’s start down at the surface.
As we dig deeper into the spring season, the angle of the sun naturally changes with Earth’s orbit around the giant ball of energy. Because of this, cooler air will become less and less robust as it traverses southeasterly towards us.
Right now we have dominant Atlantic and Gulf high pressure on top of us, driving in warm, modified air from the subtropics and even the tropics themselves. Typically warm air is bullied by cold air, but that isn’t entirely what’s expected this time around.
Let’s move up a couple levels and break down why.
The jet stream high up in our atmosphere is moving rapidly towards the east. Since it’s moving so fast, the trough of cold air extending down from Canada is also accelerating along with it. This is called a progressive trough. It doesn’t have as much time to dig south, and extend its influence into the upper Gulf and central Florida.
While this is going on, we have an amplifying upper ridge coming in right behind it, which will instigate even more warmth over our area.
So without a persistent feed of dense, cold air, the extension of our trough like we’d witnessed during winter won’t entirely take place. The warmth won’t be easily nudged out of the way and replaced.
Since the jet stream, trough, and cold air is progressing eastward instead of further towards the south, the high pressure shoving the cold front down won’t encompass much of us here in the Florida peninsula.
We will however, still receive a solid dose of dry air and gustier winds at least for the middle portions of the week ahead. Wildfires will become an even greater threat if we can’t get some substantial rain into the area soon.
Where we stand currently, Sunday is our best chance for at least some rain to help dispel a bit of the dry spell we’re on. We’ll continue closely monitoring how our pattern shakes out, and whether or not anything transpires that could bring us some much needed heavy rain.
