Good evening everyone!!   Arlene is inland over Mexico now, and has weakened to a Tropical Depression giving Mexico and south Texas very beneficial rains.  Also, the Tallahassee area got hit very hard this afternoon, and south Florida had some strong to severe weather of its own. Finally, has all of this rain helped the drought?  We’ll discuss this as well as the new drought report came in.

Tropical Depression Arlene

Current information:

• Max Winds: 30 mph
• Pressure: 1004 mb
• Movement: WSW at 8 mph
• Location: 20.9N 99.1W

The National Hurricane Center has ended Arlene’s lifetime. Arlene dissipated 110 miles west of Tuxpan, MX. Arlene continues to move inland to the west of Tuxpan, MX. Arlene’s structure is surprisingly well put together both on satellite and microwave images. It seems that just before landfall Arlene tried to quickly organize and some of that held together until now. This isn’t to say that her upper layers haven’t separated from her lower layers, but considering she has been over land for more than 12 hours she is well put together. I did expect a more rapid weakening. Elsewhere in the tropics, a few tropical wave continue their trek westward, but I do not expect any of them to develop.  I will continue to watch the Bay of Campeche because the GFS model has been hinting at some weak unorganized development.  I expect no development.

Severe Weather

There were 18 reports of severe weather in Leon and Wakulla counties during a very strong storm that moved from north to south. All of those reports were high wind reports with the highest wind reported at the FSU Love Building/NWS Tallahassee Office…64 mph. Many more trees came down and pulled down a few power lines.  According to WTXL and WCTV, upwards of 23,000 people lost power in the Tallahassee area alone. roughly 2300 people still do not have power at this time.  The campus of Florida State University lost power for a short time at around 4pm according to friends on campus at the time. In south Florida, reports came in from Broward and Palm Beach counties, where winds gusted to 72 mph and some localized damage occurred.   If you saw any damage, send me pictures if you have them!

Safety alert!! When the power went out in the city of Tallahassee, the city reported that many of the red lights across the city went out as well.  I want to remind everyone that when the power is out, traffic laws do NOT change!  If the lights are out, you need to treat each intersection as a four-way stop.  It is unlawful to just blow through a red light, even if it is not working!

Drought Update!

With all of the rain in the last week, you would expect a reduction in the drought, right?  Well, the drought monitor released its latest numbers this morning, and the numbers are not as good as I had hoped.  The intensity of the drought decreased across the state, but the actual size of the drought and dry weather did not change. Take into account that these numbers were taken on Tuesday, and any rain since then was not taken into account. It does look like we are on a wetter trend, which is very good news.  Stay tuned over the next couple of days and I will update with a Fourth of July outlook and look into which areas will not be able to have any fireworks due to the drought.

The Belles Report

This weekend and next week looks like a downward trend both in the Tropics and in Florida.  A batch of dry air will move into the sunshine state from north to south early next week, which will cut off the tropical flow from the Gulf of Mexico and limit daytime storms.  We are moving into July now, and storms can never be ruled out anywhere across the state, so rain chances will remain at a minimum of 30%.  The next tropical system may come into play by the middle to end of July, as I am not seeing any blips of anything in the models in the short-medium term.  Have a good night!!