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"UPDATE, 3 p.m. The low pressure swirl off the Florida east coast has organized to become 93L, an investigation status given tropical systems before they reach tropical depression or storm strength.
And the first reliable computer model runs take the storm off our coast between Charlotte Harbor and Tampa Bay over the next two days, then through the Gulf of Mexico to the Louisiana-Mississippi coast.
It is predicted to strengthen enough to cause some damage and power loss where it strikes the northern Gulf coast.
For us, lots of rain and some breezy conditions will continue from this evening through Thursday. By Wednesday morning, the storm is predicted to be inland over Lake Okeechobee.
9 a.m. The beautiful deep blue skies and cool temperatures that greeted dawn today will be only a memory later today as a low presssure system takes shape off Florida's east coast and moves westward over us.
The forecast is for thunderstorms — some severe.
The National Weather Service in Tampa notes that the cool, dry air that trailed a cold front into Florida will itself be partially responsible for the severe storms and the tropical development. As daily sea breezes clash along I-75, the thunderstorm cloud tops will rise into very cold upper air. Raindrops will freeze quickly and that could produce turbulent storms with hail, the weather service says.
Both Sunday and Monday have seen funnel clouds form over Southwest Florida and a tornado damaged more than a hundred homes in Cape Coral Sunday evening.
The National Hurricane Center says a surface low presssure is forming inside a cloud mass off Florida's east coast. That surface low is necessary for a system to be called "tropical."
The center says the developing storm will bring rains over most of Florida before moving into the eastern Gulf of Mexico. There, the center says, it will have favorable conditions for further development. Computer models do develop the system into a tropical one and send it toward the Texas coast, beginning Wednesday night."
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