Good morning! It turned out to be a not-so-active night last night across central Florida, with only a couple of tornado warnings issued in the wee hours of the morning for Marion County. Thus far, we've had no confirmed reports of funnel clouds or tornadoes, and fortunately no damage reports either.

It was a very frustrating forecasting day for us yesterday, that's for sure! What was forecast to be a single, consolidated area of low pressure moving into the northeast Gulf of Mexico actually splintered off into three competing centers of low pressure, with the strongest/most organized one to our south. This robbed a lot of the deep moisture from the low that affected us; heavy rain and severe weather affected south Florida but never quite made it into our area. Farther north, an upper level disturbance and another area of low pressure brought rain and storms to north Florida. In between, we were left with only scattered showers and storms.

Every once in a while, you just get one of these days when all the players are there for a severe weather situation but don't come together in just the right (or wrong! -- depending on how you look at it) way. We're certainly thankful for that yesterday. We had strong wind shear, a strong cold front, and tropical moisture moving in but a lack of instability plus sinking air over central Florida limited our storms. These days happen few and far between for us, but when they do, we take it harder than anyone else!

We're all about to catch a quiet stretch of weather now. Once the front moves through at midday, much cooler air will rush into central Florida. Lows through the weekend will be in the 40s (as close as just north of downtown Orlando!) and 50s with highs in the 70s. In fact, Thursday, some area will struggle to get out of the upper 60s for highs! I don't think we'll break any record lows, but it sure will be chilly with afternoon highs 5-10 degrees below average and lows at least 15 degrees below average. The cooler weather comes with a partly cloudy sky tomorrow with lots of sunshine Friday through the weekend.

Enjoy!

Brian Monahan