Interesting Weather Day and Weather Week On Tap (H. Michael Mogil, CCM, CBM, NWA-DS*)
Another in a series of strong cold fronts is heading for south Florida today. This time, the front is linked to a long-lived Pacific weather system (which brought flooding and mudslides to California, and heavy snow and flooding to parts of Texas, both earlier this week). Now the system is starting to deposit a wintry weather mix (including up to a foot of snow) across parts of the Carolinas and some nearby states. To the south of the system, unusually warm and humid air covers south Florida (at noon EST today, the dewpoint in Naples, FL was 73 degrees), setting the stage for significant (and much needed) rainfall. Some strong to marginally severe thunderstorms are also possible as the line of thunderstorms arrives around the time of maximum daily solar heating. Figures 1 and 2 show radar imagery for the southeast U.S. and south Florida around 12:30pm EST today, respectively. Fig. 2 shows the scalloped nature of the line of storms – called a LEWP (line echo wave pattern) – which is an indication of localized strong outflow winds from individual storms.
Once the front exits south Florida (later tonight), much cooler and drier air is set to move in. Daytime highs on Tuesday will struggle to reach the mid-60’s. L
This will be followed by a quick warm-up and yet another cold front by week’s end.
This repeat weather pattern is linked to a large-scale upper-level trough in the eastern U.S., which is allowing Canadian air masses to periodically move southward…all the way to south Florida.
© 2018 H. Michael Mogil
Originally posted 12/9/18
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