Tracking tropical development chances in the Gulf | Max Defender 8 Weather

[00:00:00]We're just watching this kind of whirling developing area of low pressure in the eastern and northeastern Gulf uh that we're looking for potential tropical development. Wouldn't be surprised through later today, especially as the odds have quite literally been going up and up, to see at least a tropical depression out of this here in the next 24 hours, maybe 48 hours. Uh but getting a closer look at the eastern edge of this bringing us a lot of rain here across Tampa Bay so far this morning, mainly up and down the coastline. Got some really heavy rain, still a few lightning strikes down into Sarasota County kind of slowly working their way towards Manatee. Here downtown Tampa, as we mentioned, seeing some raindrops, got some kind of steady rain over the downtown area, and otherwise some light light rain up and down coastal Pinellas, Pasco, Hernando counties so far this morning. And this has kind of been ongoing since about 2:00 this morning. Uh just developing more and more. Here's a big picture look across the area. You can see what looks like You can actually Yeah, there you go. You can see the rain coming down here for the downtown Tampa sky cam. St. Pete Beach, a lot of cloud cover there.

[00:00:58]Sarasota also there. Few raindrops on the camera. Polk County there also seeing a little bit of a breeze, which will be part of the forecast today with a wind-driven low end level one out of five risk for severe weather. Again, that's mainly because of the risk of gusty, if not damaging, winds in some of these stronger passing showers and storms. Going to be looking for those kind of just bands of rain and storms that could train over parts of the area, which is just rolling over and over, kind of repeat downpours for parts mainly of the coastline, which is why we have that low end flood risk as well for the coast. But overall, that's not to say that inland areas are going to completely miss out. I think we'll see some passing downpours and storms at times, but also we'll notice a little bit of a lull at times uh throughout the day before we see redevelopment of more showers and storms through the midnight hours taking you into early Monday morning.

[00:01:46]But here's a look at the latest on Invest 91L from the National Hurricane Center as of their 2:00 a.m. update, a 60% chance in the next 48 hours, as well as the long-term forecasts for tropical development. Overall right now the expectation is it's going to drift towards the north if not slightly there to the northwest, potentially rolling into the northern Gulf Coast and likely as a tropical depression. But some forecast models are trying to hint at a little bit of a longer run here over the open waters of the Gulf if not a sliding across westward at northern portions of the Gulf Coast. Either way it's going to be hugging these really hot sea surface temperatures uh temperatures there in the mid-80s. Uh so we'll have a better chance potentially here in the next few days to maybe even see Bertha out of this system. One way or another though here locally in Florida looking at scattered showers and storms if not widespread showers and storms today into your Monday before the drier air arrives kind of in the wake of that circulation for the middle of the week and then some better tropical moisture looks to kind of return to the forecast through the second half of the 8-day. So here's a look at that on the 8-day forecast is 60 at least percent chance of rain today tomorrow and then seeing that back off to just a few showers. I think a lot of a lot more sunshine comes out for the middle of the week. Then rain chances will linger in that kind of isolated coverage of showers and storms into next weekend. High temperatures are back in the low 90s through the second half of the 8-day.