Staying dry but still hot

SARASOTA, Fla. (WWSB) - Even though temperatures have been slightly above average the humidity is much lower than it has been all summer long. This makes it feel much more bearable than the oppressive humidity we had to deal with throughout the past 3 months.

Overnight look for mostly fair skies and lows in the low to mid 70s. Wednesday through Friday we will see high pressure dominate our weather with generally partly cloudy skies and highs in the low 90s. The air will be generally dry which means we will only see a small chance for a few showers and an isolated thunderstorm or two later in the day.

By the weekend we will see a little more moisture return which will bring our rain chances up to only 30% for late day showers. Otherwise we will see mostly sunny skies in the morning becoming partly cloudy in the afternoon. Temperatures will warm into low to mid 90s and lows in the mid to upper 70s.

The forecast is calling for more of the same through early next week as well as we watch to see what the new tropical cyclone Lee will be doing.

In the tropics we are monitoring the 12th named storm of the season tropical storm Lee. It is located in the south central Atlantic right now and is expected to keep moving to the WNW at around 15 miles per hour. It looks to become the 3 major hurricane of the season by Friday with winds up to 125 mph. After Friday it will continue to grow and get much stronger with most intensity forecast models suggesting it will be a strong cat. 4 storm by Sunday afternoon.

As far as its path is concerned it looks like this one will move north of the NE Caribbean islands but close enough that Puerto Rico will likely feel some impacts from the storm as it will be a rather large one by then. The short term models are all tightly clustered over the next 3 days taking it just to the NE of the US and British Virgin Islands. The majority of the long range models suggest a turn more toward the NW and then to the north after 5 days from now. It is still too early to say whether it will have a huge impact on the US. This one is going to be large. At this time it looks like it stays away from Florida as a trough of low pressure is expected to develop over the eastern 1/3 of the US. This should turn the storm away from the U.S.

You should still monitor this storm over the upcoming weekend as things can change especially during this time of year.

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