Rain chances going up a little on Friday

SARASOTA, Fla. (WWSB) - All eyes are on hurricane Lee as it has rapidly developed into a category 4 hurricane in an unprecedented time frame on Thursday. Only one other storm has done it faster so far and that was Wilma in 2005 when it went from a 60kt. storm to a 150kt. storm in 24 hours off the coast of the Yucatan.

Today Lee went from a category 2 hurricane this Thursday morning to a major category 4 hurricane by 5 p.m. The famed hurricane hunters have found a drop in pressure down to 936 mb this evening as they made their first pass into the eye. The maximum flight level wind was at an amazing 170 mph. It will likely be a category 5 hurricane by the 11 p.m. advisory this Thursday night. It still however is forecast to stay north of the Caribbean Islands as it moves to the WNW during the upcoming days. It will continue on this track through Tuesday and then most models agree it will start to take off to the north after that.

At this time Florida is not in the path of this storm and Lee looks to stay several hundred miles east of Florida as it starts it journey northward next week. There are no models which bring it anywhere close to the Sunshine state. Looking at long range forecast models the NE U.S. has to keep a close eye on this storm as some global models get very close to the northern New England states late next week.

Elsewhere in the tropics the 13th named storm of the season has formed in the far eastern Atlantic. Margot is expected to move to the NW and stay out into the open waters of the Atlantic over the next 7 days. It looks to be a “fish” storm only having an impact on water. We still have a long way to go before the season ends on Nov. 30th. so make sure you are prepared as we move into the second half of the tropical season.

For our weather look for a little more moisture to move back in bringing a little better chance for at least some scattered showers and a few thunderstorms on Friday and through the weekend. With a west to southwest wind we will see that humidity rise once again making it feel a bit warmer. We will also see a chance for a few coastal showers or isolated thunderstorms in the morning and early afternoon near the coast and then the main focus of storms should be inland pushing toward the east coast later in the day. The high will be in the low 90s and lows will be in the mid to upper 80s. The rain chance on Friday is at 40% and at 30% on Saturday and Sunday.

This pattern will stick around through the work week next week with a chance for scattered showers and thunderstorms each day otherwise mostly sunny to partly cloudy skies are expected.

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