Happy Saturday, South Florida!

What a drenching couple of days it has been for us. Hopefully everyone has been able to stay dry amidst the periods of heavy rain that we have been seeing around here. Unfortunately it looks like South Florida will continue on this wet weather pattern. And as a matter fact our Saturday in South Florida started off on the soggy side with rain and thunderstorms spreading across the East Coast metro areas before the Sun even came up!  And when the Sun did rise, South Florida woke up to grey and gloomy skies.

So why are we stuck in this wet weather pattern? Well for one, the time of year doesn’t really allow for fronts to actually clear south Florida. (It’s very unusual for us to get a complete ‘frontal passage‘ this time of year.) But given the time of year, fronts are REACHING South Florida,…they are just not CLEARING South Florida.  So as these Fall fronts stall out over our area, it helps trap moisture for areas to the south of where the actual front lies:  And that’s where South Florida has been for about a week now.

So where is this moisture coming from you might ask? Well also given the time of year, we’re still only about 75% done with hurricane season. And right now across the Caribbean we find newly named Tropical Storm Gamma. Moisture associated with Gamma is actually being funneled into South Florida and with the front right over us, it’s helping trap that moisture over our area. So the atmospheric ingredients all lead to a continued soggy weather pattern for us.  At least through today.

Today South Florida can once again expect cloudy skies with periods of heavy rain and scattered thunderstorms across our area. Temperatures will struggle to warm past the mid 80s today given the bouts of heavy rain that we are likely to see on and off throughout the day. Waterspouts will be a big concern for all South Florida coastal waters so boating conditions will not be ideal at least not to the first half of the weekend. During times of high tide, low-lying coastal areas could see some salt water flooding especially during times of high tide.

And speaking of flooding, because of the rain that we have already received the last couple of days which has saturated the ground here in South Florida, flooding could be of major concern today  This is why coastal and metro Broward County and all of Miami-Dade continue to be under a flood watch through at least Sunday evening. Some south Florida spots have already received over 5 inches of rain between Thursday and Friday and several inches of rain are possible once again throughout the day today.

The latter part of the weekend hopefully shows a downtrend as far as our rain chances here in South Florida. As we head into the start of the workweek the front over our area will begin to dissipate and should finally bring us a relief as far as the rain is concerned. We could see rain ramping up once again by the middle of the work week as a series of fronts do try to reach south Florida. We will continue on this trend of fall fronts reaching our area, but unfortunately none show to be strong enough to actually clear our area. So we could be in a similar set up by the middle of the upcoming work week before rain chances begin to go back to typical by the end of the week. Of course this is still days away so let’s just focus on the issue at hand,…And that happens to be the flood concern through the weekend.

Hope you’re able to keep dry today!

Erika Delgado

Meteorologist

WSVN Channel 7 News

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