Thunderstorms Return to Forecast With Gusty Winds Likely

This has been the familiar scene on radar but do not get used to it as we could go from severe clear to severe weather. It has been high and dry for the past four days in the Jacksonville and St. Augustine area but just in time for our Saturday afternoon plans things will get more interesting today. We will still be plenty hot at the surface with highs in the lower to middle 90s but the big change is some cooler air aloft moving over our area. This same pool of cool air brought 4 to 7 inches of rain of rain to portions of Georgia overnight with some severe thunderstorms to boot. For thunderstorms to form you have to have some cooler air aloft and this missing ingredient will be present today here at home due to the outflow from those Georgia storms. Even though things have settled down this morning the upper-level winds will bring that disturbance into Northeast Florida this afternoon and collide with plenty of heat and humidity.

There could be SOME STRONG THUNDERSTORMS with the main threat being damaging winds. There could also be some locally heavy rainfall amounts of over one inch and much of that could fall in 30 minutes or less so be careful of flooding. In a nutshell, do not cancel your plans to the beach and pool today but stay alert to changing conditions. Any storms that do form will likely last less than an hour. Right now I put our rain chances at 70%. Stay safe.


Here is a satellite picture showing the "ridge rider" (shown in white) disturbance running around our hot high pressure that will help flare up storms this afternoon. Sunday should be much quieter with just a lone shower or storm as high pressure once again builds east and gains more strength keeping the atmosphere warmer at all levels and not allowing any more ridge-riders to play havoc with our plans. No big changes to your 10 day forecast, but I will make sure to post an update for you before you can get it anywhere else. It is the competitive spirit I developed at WLFI TV-18.