ORLANDO, Fla. – This morning Florida was struck with incredible bouts of severe weather.
Multiple special weather statements for gusty winds, flash flooding, severe warnings encompassing areas buffeted by 60+mph winds, and lastly TORNADOES!
There was a particular cell that travelled from southern Sumter County all the way across a majority of the peninsula before exiting our east coast off southern Volusia County close to noon. Before doing so, it even attempted to split in half and form more funnels south of where the parent cell was moving!
What created all this Monday morning mayhem? An area of low pressure which formed over Texas a few days ago moved due eastward along the upper Gulf coastline, bringing down cool, dry air from the central United States to run face-first into warm, moist air entrenched across our area. There’s more to it than the simple ingredients we typically monitor for rain or storms here in the Sunshine State, and we’re going to break them down.
First and foremost, we’re out of the heart of winter. This means our polar front jet has started its usual retrograde back towards the north. We no longer anticipate nor expect to see any huge plunges of cold air, or the famous “arctic blasts” we battled through the likes of December and January.
At this point we’re rapidly approaching the springtime, which means the angle of the sun heating the different quadrants of the Earth is changing. This will have implications on our day-to-day and week-to-week.
We also have some very dramatic evolutions occurring to our southwest in the equatorial Pacific. Our ENSO regions are quickly warming, with the regions closest to South America well into El Nino territory. Just like during the hurricane season, this does influence our weather locally!
Warm water creates lift, it creates shear, and it enhances the jet stream because of this temperature discontinuity. The reason we were so susceptible to tornadic activity this morning is thanks to the subtropical jet being reinforced by all the locally warm water, and driving up our shear and available energy for severe thunderstorms.
Now on top of that, the waters in the Gulf are COOKING! They’re so warm, they could support tropical cyclone development if we were into the summer season. The reason I want to put so much energy into highlighting these warm anomalies is given the time of year. It isn’t hurricane season yet. We aren’t yet into spring either. But, we’re past the point of “no return” if you will.
With a lack of cold blasts and arctic plunges coming, these water temps are very unlikely to drop much between now and when severe season kicks in full force. Let’s not even start peeling back the layers surrounding our upcoming hurricane season. But all this warmth will play a role in our rainy season, the types of thunderstorms we receive, and unfortunately the levels of tornado potential we could see moving through the rest of March, April, and May.
