First Alert Weather: Better chance for rain next week with Lee staying to our east

SARASOTA, Fla. (WWSB) - Upper-level and surface ridges to the north will begin to sink south and allow a surface cold front to sink into North Florida.

These shifts in the atmosphere will permit a wind shift that will drive more humid air into the Suncoast. This in turn will keep the nighttime temperatures a bit warmer.

It will also make the afternoon high temperatures feel a bit higher as our heat index will rise a degree or two. The most important change will be moderate rain chances each day at 30% to 40%.

The chances for a direct hit by Hurricane Lee appear to be very small at this point. However, with any large and powerful storm in the near Atlantic, it is best to stay current on the tropical forecast into the weekend and beyond, until the storm is north of our latitude.

There remain several possible tracks Lee could take, but all of them require Lee to begin to move north after becoming nearly stationary for a time several hundred miles off the east coast of Florida.

At this point, it will be a major hurricane. As it lifts north, parts of the mid-Atlantic to northeast coast of the United States and the Canadian Maritimes may be affected, depending on the distance of the storm from the coast and the strength of the storm at that time.

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