Sunday, February 5, 2012

Area of Disturbed Weather Forming West of Cuba (Active Tropics on Superbowl Sunday?!?!)

When you think of SuperBowl Sunday, the first thing that comes to mind is probably not a tropical weather system. After all, it is early February, right?

Well, an area of disturbed weather is indeed forming in the Tropics, to the West of Cuba and Southwest of Florida this morning:


The National Hurricane Center is closely monitoring this area for additional organization and/or development. An early look at a few of the tropical weather computer models generally track the system to the Northeast across the Florida peninsula over the next few days:


Regardless of whether or not the system ever obtains a tropical designation, rain and thunderstorm activity will be on the increase over central and southern Florida for the next few days.  The latest image from the Key West, FL radar shows widespread shower and thunderstorm activity already spreading into the Keys this hour:


The HPC is forecasting widespread 1-2 inch rains across the Keys and south Florida for the next 2 days:


If this system does become further organized, rain is likely to become much more widespread and much heavier than currently indicated on the above forecast image.

Folks with interests across southern and central Florida should keep an eye on this system over the next 24-48 hours.

The last storm that I could find that was formally designated as a tropical system during the month of February (in North Atlantic basin) was the "Groundhog's Day" storm of 1952.  That system began very near where this one is currently located, and eventually tracked through south Florida and up the U.S. East Coast.


If you enjoy reading 'The Original Weather Blog', please be sure to "like" our facebook page!

No comments: