Florida Storm Pattern Remains Very Persistent
Posted by Jeff Gammons on Sunday, April 6, 2008 at 11:19 am
Tagged as: Florida Weather
Florida Thunderstorm Chasing Remains Active - Heading Out Today
I really can’t believe how active the storms have been in Florida the last week or two. All last week, we were in a summer time like pattern, with active sea breeze storms each afternoon. I have chased pretty much every afternoon all over Southern and central Florida for the last week, and now this weekend continues with active weather with a series of short-waves helping to enhance storms along with daily sea breeze boundaries. There are no complaints from me on any of this, and I have bagged some great video, time lapse, lightning, hail and flooding scenes over the last 10 days.
Yesterday, central Florida was active with strong storms, and I was out filming convective time lapse scenes, with animated rain curtains, sun rays, and mammatus. Then overnight, a fast moving squall line / gust front associated with a Mesoscale Convective System (MCS), raced through all of central and South Florida. About 2:am ET, I awoke to very strong winds, heavy rains and lightning. I went out and just watched the squall move through while sitting on the patio. The wind surge behind the boundary was quite impressive, and we picked up more rain.
And The Active Thunderstorm Pattern Continues Today
Today, the MCS has moved offshore into the Atlantic near the Bahamas, and the air mass is already in recovery mode. Winds have returned southerly, and the high level clouds have moved out, giving way to full hot sun that now is increasing the instability for today’s storms expected this afternoon. Expected sea breeze boundaries and outflow boundaries from the Gulf convection, along with some upper-level support will help set the stage for more strong to isolated severe storms this afternoon and evening. I have already cleared my day, and plan to head out by 1pm local.
I’d like to edit together some of the 20 different time lapse scenes I have captured over the last week into a music video for the site, but I seem to have little time each day with all the active weather. Maybe by mid week, things look to slow down, so I’ll have more time to edit up some video. All and all, it’s been great to have all this active weather, and decent rainfall so early in the season. Big change from the 2007 spring season.
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Congratulations For Hard Work Done - The Barometer Bob Show
Another outstanding day if you like thunderstorms in Florida. The sea breeze storms got going once again early, and them became the main show more on the western sea breeze later in the day. I didn’t intercept a slow, southward moving storm like on Tuesday, but I did shoot some interesting time lapse video scenes from early morning convection moving if off the ocean in Palm Beach County, to larger storms and outflow boundaries over the Lake Okeechobee region and in Glades County. I’ll have the video up tomorrow with also anything I capture for today.
The storm did have a severe thunderstorm warning for about a half hour, and this was true since I came into small hail several times during the storms lifetime. A few times during it’s more mature stages, there was a defined area of green hail hues just to the right of the updraft. Northwesterly upper level winds carried a few larger hail stones ( 0.50) down towards my location a few times when southeast of the storm. The lightning was vivid, and even saw a cool little rain-foot / microburst early in the storms life. After a few wall clouds and hail stones, the storm became outflow dominant and brought impressive widespread rains over much of the county well into the mid evening hours.
When watching the video I have provided of the storm, in the first time lapse, you can clearly see the rich low-level flow and towering Cumulus, with the northwesterly winds aloft streaming overhead. In the second time lapse scene, the camera is facing northwest at first and slowly pans with the southward moving mature storm. There are several other scenes of the storm during it’s afternoon tour along the east coast sea and lake breeze boundary. It was a nice start to the spring storm season for me, and really has me in the mood for some Supercell chasing in the Plains next month. It was great to see the sea breeze fired up, because this time last year, I was chasing 
Been very busy the last day or two, and I wanted to catch up on this past weekend events. On Saturday, I headed down to the Florida Keys for a Hurricane Chaser gathering that veteran Hurricane and Storm Chaser Jim Leonard was hosting at his beautiful Islamorada home. This turned out to be a fantastic afternoon and evening packed with tons of tornado and hurricane video, great weather discussions on past severe weather events, and hurricane intercepts over the years. The turn out was pretty good, I’d say about 10-11 people showed up. I had the chance to meet some very nice and interesting new people, and we all geeked it up weather-style without a problem.
A few new faces to me was 
I’m actually happy to say that there are some isolated general thunderstorms in the forecast for this weekend, especially on Sunday. The best chances look to be south of Big Lake O, as better moisture is expected to filter into the region from the south. Light wind fields will allow some sea breeze circulations to develop, helping with some afternoon convergence over the interior locations of South Florida.
Things have been fairly quiet around these parts the last few days, and this trend looks to continue into the weekend as upper ridging holds in place. Our winds are finally veering to easterly and should become southeasterly by tomorrow. Our temperatures have been a good 10-15F below seasonal normal’s, and I’m ready for the return of the hot and humid Florida weather. This weekend should be really nice, and some plans I have on the table for this weekend look to work well with this weekends forecast and expected warm and clear weather. More on those plans after the weekend.
