Drier air is slipping into our area thanks to Ophelia as it moves into North Carolina. The air on the back side of this storm is very dry and is filtering into Florida lowering the humidity and keeping the sunshine in the forecast on Saturday.
Some much needed rain has fallen across parts of the Suncoast over the past couple of days. Those rain chances will be going down as some drier air gets pushed into our area on Friday.
Some much needed rain fell over a large area on Wednesday and we will see another round on Thursday as an old front and a low pressure starts to spin up just offshore of Jacksonville.
We will see a fairly good east wind to start the day on Tuesday this in combination with a sea breeze expected to hug the coast so we will have a pretty good chance for scattered mainly late afternoon and early evening thunderstorms on Tuesday.
In the tropics hurricane Lee is looking a lot healthier this evening and should stay as a major category 3 hurricane on Tuesday if not a little stronger. It is forecast to start its move to the north Wednesday.
A mid level low will continue to bring a chance for a few showers and a possible thunderstorm on Saturday but that rain chance is fairly low at 40% mainly inland later in the day.
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.
Most models are in agreement that it will continue to move to the WNW over the next 5 days and then turn more toward the north after that keeping it away from Florida and moving it toward Bermuda or slightly to the west of the Island. It is too early to say whether it will directly impact the east coast but it bears watching down the road late next week.
n 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.
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