NWS warns entire county plus Southern PBC

http://inws.wrh.noaa.gov/weather/alertinfo/3596363

Yikes! Now thats a warning area! It’s essentially the entire metro. The storms yesterday that formed out of the same pattern had quite the gust front (30mph+) so better safe than sorry right?! Expect heavy wind, blowing rain, some limited CG lightning and better stay inside for lunch.

Tstorms are LIKELY today!

70% chance of thunderstorms have been announced for the SE Florida region by the Miami NWS office.  All week we have been in a general SSW-SW flow at the surface which will enhance the seabreeze, and push any storms that form generally to the NE.  This has resulted in daily rains and thunderstorms earlier this week, and the pattern is expected to continue for the next few days.

 

Tornado hits Tamarac!

I’ll update this post as I gather videos, pics, etc from public places.  For now, the official report from NOAA regarding this rare summertime Florida tornado.

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/mfl/news/TamaracTornado.pdf

The twister started out as a heavily rotating wall cloud at University/Commercial:

The funnel formed and dropped very near my own home, our neighborhood had some superficial damage, and some trees downed. This video shows the tornado as it was skipping across my apt complex, the videographer is about 3 blocks SSE:

Some photos of the damage at this pre-touchdown phase (most of this is due to the strong downburst):

 

Yesterday redux

Yesterday had widespread storms across most of the metro, including a very nice storm over Weston which prompted a significant weather event advisory from the Miami NWS office. There was some limited street flooding in the NW suburbs from the afternoon storms as the SB initiated storms came in, and later teh outflow initiated storms moved around the area.  The flow was from the SSE, thus storms slowly drifted NNW across the metro areas.  Today should be a repeat of this event with a little more convective action, and a little more moisture than yesterday.  Upper air plots show 650-350mb layer flow from the NW, while below that is mostly from the south and SW. Surface winds are light from the SSE, but they are moving around to the west. This means storms are likely to be sheared unusually today, and more likely to remain near the coast.

TS Emily forms near the graveyard

Invest 91L has been teasing us with development potential for days now.  Convection had been pulsing up and down, circulation centers have been bouncing around, becoming unstacked, tilted, sheared away – and yesterday while crossing Martinique, the hunters found her to have a low-level circulation.  Winds are at about 45kts at flight level, so the NHC classed her at 8pm as a full-fledged storm with 40mph winds.

She will not have an easy time.  She has entered the graveyard, so named because the persistent easterlies in this region have stymied, sheared apart, unstacked, and otherwise decimated even full-fledged hurricanes that enter the area west of the Lesser Antilles. Her next target appears to be Hispaniola – where the landmasses high rugged mountains are likely to disrupt her circulation.  Should she survive all that – the Bahamas await.  The crystal clear shallow water is like jet fuel to storms. The deeper waters near the Florida coast are bathtub warm to a significant depth fueled by the jetstream, so the only inhibitor would seem to be the upper atmosphere environment.

Emily is progged to find a weakness in the Atlantic ridge and nudge her way around it.  Models have been sniffing out a recurve scenario near the eastern coast of FL for days now. The question being where the recurve occurs.  Models this morning have shifted west with the BAMS showing a gulf storm, while the GFS and UKMET stay east of FL.  We need more time and more model runs to hammer this track out.

Hot, Humid, and not much chance for rain

Today has us in the throes of the Easterlies.  Well south-easterlies.  This will deign to bring us more heat and humidity, but the light nature of these winds will mean any storms that form will stay put.  In the upper atmosphere, the winds remain fairly strong from the east. This means the storms will be sheared and thus can become strong.  There is enough instability in the atmosphere (in sfl, this means no subsidence or significant inversion exists), and PWATS hovers around 2″.  This is a recipe for SB storms this afternoon which might start a bit earlier due to the light low level flow.