Drenching South Florida Downpours
June 01, 2012; 8:31 AM
While the rainy season is well under way in the Florida Peninsula, a weak tropical system will unload torrential downpours over South Florida into the start of the weekend.
A disorganized tropical system in the northwestern Caribbean and southeastern Gulf of Mexico has little chance of developing into anything strong in terms of wind. However, a stream of drenching showers and thunderstorms will continue to flow across the Keys and into South Florida and part of the Bahamas into Saturday.
The repeating downpours have the potential to bring urban and lowland area flooding and foil outdoor plans.
It definitely will not be good boating and beach weather for a couple of days, but conditions should improve, or dry out if you will, later in the weekend.
A corridor of showers and thunderstorms stretched from northeast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula to across South Florida and part of the Bahamas on this National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite image during the midday hours June 1, 2012.
According to Tropical Weather Expert Dan Kottlowski, "Despite the early start to the tropical storm season in the Atlantic, we are entering a quiet period that should take us into the middle of June."
Kottlowski is referring to disruptive wind shear (strong straight-line winds in the mid and upper levels of the atmosphere) in typical tropical storm formation areas during the early season.
The fourth tropical wave has emerged off the Africa Coast today and is about on track for the number of such disturbances for late May.
"We feel the area from the northwestern Caribbean to the southwestern Gulf will be the main areas to watch moving forward through June with a general area of low pressure hanging round," Kottlowski said.
This story was originally published at 10:00 a.m. EDT Thursday, May 31, 2012 and has been updated.