October 11, 2011

Low Producing Heavy Rain, Wind

A storm system that formed just southeast of Miami Sunday and moved inland over Cape Canaveral Sunday night was centered just southwest of Tallahassee, Fla., Tuesday morning.

The storm reached a low pressure of 998 millibars Sunday night just before it moved inland near Cape Canaveral.

The lowest pressure in the system is now around 1007 millibars. The low pressure center will transfer its energy to another developing low just east of Georgia this afternoon or evening, then track northward along the East Coast tonight and Wednesday.

There is no chance that this system will be able to become an organized tropical system.

This storm system will continue to create a strong pressure gradient with a large high pressure area to the north. This will help funnel deep tropical moisture into coastal and near coastal areas of the southeast United States today and tonight.

This deep moisture will support moderate to heavy rainfall.

The pressure gradient will also bring strong gusty winds mostly to coastal areas with wind gusts to or just above 40 mph. Beyond tonight, the storm system will track into the eastern Middle Atlantic states to bring 1-3 inches of rain.

The pressure gradient is expected to weaken by Wednesday, but there still will be a strong gusty wind along the coast.

Satellite images and even radar suggested this system was never a pure tropical system. However, one could argue that this could have been classified as a subtropical storm from late Sunday through Sunday night.

Since the system moved over land in less than 12 hours after it formed, it did not stay over water long enough to become a fully developed subtropical or tropical system.

Regardless of being classified, it has produced rainfall of 4-12 inches of rain along the east coast of Florida and 2-8 inches elsewhere across the Sunshine State.

We see no other tropical systems across the Atlantic Basin that would evolve into an organized tropical system during the next several days.

Long-range computer forecasts are showing low pressure slowly evolving over the western Caribbean next week.

Whether that becomes an organized tropical system is highly uncertain at this point.

By AccuWeather Expert Senior Meteorologist Dan Kottlowski

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