ORLANDO, Fla. – It feels like on a weekly basis we’re tracking a threat for strong thunderstorms in one way, shape or form.
Especially if you’re reading this and live up around Alachua, Sumter, Lake or Marion counties, just about every Sunday Mother Nature decides it’s time for her weekly check up on Central Florida with a nudge of severe weather.
Is this the pattern we’re facing going forward? Can we fully anticipate thunderstorms, especially those packing a bit more of a punch than your garden-variety Florida rains, on a weekend-by-weekend basis?
Believe it or not, the answer lies within this cool spell we’re about to receive. In weather, I am a firm believer “what goes up, must come down.” Let’s break that down.
The atmosphere behaves like a fluid in a variety of ways. You could honestly argue you’ve seen weather at work whenever you step inside the pool, a hot tub or even your bath tub. As a result, just about everything we battle through, comes in WAVES.
There’s a reason our large-scale pattern is called the “longwave” pattern, when we’re talking the jet stream that flows west to east across our country.
The last few days have been plagued by above-average temperatures during the warmest part of the day. We’ve hit 90 degrees for the first time in 2025, and basically stayed there. But now we’re not only watching for the threat of powerful thunderstorms, we’re also watching as our temperatures more or less PLUMMET after just beginning to get used to this pseudo summertime set up.
When there’s lots of warmth built up over a certain area, this is a primary driver for bad weather. It throws the atmosphere all out of whack. Just like the surface of your pool when the wind blows on it, or when you jump in. It makes waves. It causes the water to splash outside of the pool itself. The atmosphere goes out of balance when there’s too much heat or too much cold built up in one particular spot.
With this introduction of cooler weather into the peninsula, we’re actually looking at a nice break from severe thunderstorms. The drop in temperatures signals a flip in our pattern to where we can finally relinquish the abnormal heat and get us back to normal.
Our average temperature for the month of April is around 82-85 degrees, which is precisely where the forecast leads us after today’s bout of active weather.
The less heat there is, combined with a lack of substantial moisture (even though Florida is practically synonymous with being muggy, humid, moist, however you choose to describe it), results in rain becoming scarce.
So we could see a fairly quiet rest of the month until our pattern prepares to flip all over again in a couple weeks. Where we stand currently, however, it seems the average temps and seasonal weather conditions will prevail as we head into the middle/latter portions of April.
This comes with one caveat; drought conditions continue to dominate. We’re still below average in our precipitation totals. So be mindful of watering your lawns, taking care of your gardens and watching for anything that could produce wildfires in your neighborhood, town or city.
I forgot to mention, alongside believing with Mother Nature “what goes up, always comes back down,” I’m also a fateful believer in, “it’s always a give-and-take with Mother Nature” as well.
The News 6 weather team pinpoints your forecast and delivers all the weather news you need to know.
