Day 1 of Key West, FL (KEYW)

Typical Florida Keys weather will occur for day 1, with light easterly to northeasterly winds, partly cloudy skies, and temperatures similar to the past few days with small diurnal range. For reference, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and today had a high/low of 85/77, 82/78, 86/78, and 88/80 respectively (Saturday’s high was cooler because it was cloudy all day). Tomorrow should be slightly cooler than today with more widespread (but not overcast) cloudiness perhaps both at low-level and high-level. One challenge that models are only picking up now on is the possibility of a few thunderstorms in the area due to a very subtle boundary/convergence zone between weak northerly winds to the north and weak northeasterly winds to the south, making for a really tricky precipitation forecast, with who does well largely based on luck. The thunderstorms are unlikely to persist for a long time and dump a large amount of rain, but still, if KEYW gets nailed, there could be 0.5” with a brief burst of wind up to 20 kt, whereas it would be 0.00” with winds mostly 10 kt or less if the scattered thunderstorms miss. The low could also be achieved during the storms as well if they occur, with evaporational cooling and cool downdrafts, albeit the lack of dry air aloft will preclude very strong cold pools and gust fronts like often seen in the western and central U.S.

 

(Also, KEYW appears to still have missing 5-min temperature observations here and there, but it seems like the weather station is still at least recording properly, and the climo report is reporting seemingly correct high and low temperatures.)

 

Source: PivotalWeather

 

Source: PivotalWeather