Eyecandy Florida Shelf Cloud Storm Structure

Florida Shelf Cloud / Gust front picture

Yesterday evening I was entertained by a large multi-cluster of strong thunderstorms that develop over Lake Okeechobee from the east coast sea breeze boundary and some outflow boundaries, colliding smack over the center of the lake. This all kind of organized into one large storm that slowly moved east-northeast, just south of Taylor Creek. I headed out and shot some scenes of the massive developing shelf-cloud feature along a canal as it slowly transformed into a more symmetrical storm, with little inflow tails and a small but visible hail core. The storm looked some what balanced for a short-time, sustaining itself nicely.

The lightning was very intense, hitting several power poles around me, and almost continuous for 30 minutes. I drove southeast on S.R.98 to get a better view of the core and sample (film) some of the straight-line winds. Encounter some pea size hail, and 50mph winds, making it look like I was in a Tropical Storm, but the giveaway that it was not, was the hail and crazy cloud-to-ground lightning.

It was a great typical Florida summertime thunderstorm, and put a great end not only to my Friday, but also my week. Today, things look to be a lot more relaxed in the storm department as a low and mid-level ridge move into the area, bringing some drier air and subsidence keeping storm in check. Only expecting a slight chance of a isolated storm where the east coast sea breeze and lake breeze convergence zones setup. Temperatures forecast to reach the mid to upper 90sF, with heat index’s in the lower 100’sF. It’s going to hot no matter what, so I think a day on the water, or in the water seem wise.

(update 6:32pm - made it to 98.4F today, and no storms in sight as everything is strongly capped today.)

So, have a good weekend everyone, and also be sure to see my earlier post from this morning on the Delta II Rocket Launch smoke / gas plume leftovers at sunrise. Very cool picture!