Lightning Started Fire, Severe Storms Expected Today

Friday ended the weekend with a lightning started wildfire on the north side of Okeechobee City, located in South-central Florida. Area thunderstorms with very active lightning, started the fire north of the north High School campus on the eastern side of S.R. 411 North. I was actually out on my way to dinner with Kersten, when we saw this large plume of smoke coming a few miles away. There was ongoing lightning at the time, and I thought this had to be another lightning started wildfire.

This is like the 5^th lightning wildfire I have seen in the last week, within about 50 miles of my home. Sure we are getting a lot of rain these days, but the drought is still here. It’s going to take months to really see a difference in the drought conditions. I put together a small video clip of yesterday Okeechobee City wildfire event. It’s about 7mb, and has a nice set of scenes from the fire.

Severe Weather Expected Today:

Severe weather is on tap for most of Florida today, with expected large hail and damaging winds, Cape is off the charts today in the 4000-5000 range, with very cold temperature aloft moving into the area with a upper-level disturbance. Throw in all the sea breeze and lake boundaries and you have a nice setup for strong-to-severe storms over a large area. I plan to be out much of the day shooting video for TV and stock. New severe thunderstorm watch issued for much of the state of Florida through 9:00pm ET.

SEASONABLY COOL MID-LEVEL TEMPERATURES OF -9 TO -10 C AT 500 MB COUPLED WITH A VERY MOIST BOUNDARY LAYER IS RESULTING IN AN ALREADY STRONGLY UNSTABLE AIR MASS THIS MORNING WITH MLCAPES OF 3000-3500 J/KG. VIGOROUS TSTM DEVELOPMENT IS EXPECTED ALONG EVOLVING SEA BREEZE BOUNDARIES AS WELL AS SYNOPTIC COLD FRONT AND PRE-FRONTAL WIND SHIFT. WHILE VERTICAL SHEAR REMAINS QUITE WEAK…THE DEGREE OF INSTABILITY WILL BE SUPPORTIVE OF ORGANIZED TSTMS CAPABLE OF WET MICROBURSTS AND SOME HAIL.

I’ll keep you posted….

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