JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Well, we missed it by one. We were one degree away from tying a record low here in Jacksonville from 1899 -- or 117 years ago! Our official low was 61°.
The cool, refreshing weather will be with us once again Tuesday morning before mother nature turns up the dial on the kiln. Baby, it's about to get hot, again!
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A late season cold front moved through this weekend bringing with it rain that ruined our weekend. The flip side is we're waking up to near record lows Tuesday morning as well as a beautiful week kicks off.
The dry air that filtered in behind the front allowed our temps to dive overnight. However although dry air cools quickly, it also warms quickly. Look for our high temperatures of 85 on Monday to transition into 95 by the end of the week, if not hotter. Heat advisories may once again be required for portions of the area as our heat index values soar to well over 100°.
So you may have heard about Tropical Storm Danielle this morning. Well let me let you in on a little secret with Danielle: she ain't worth another thought. This storm will be moving inland over Mexico Monday afternoon and that'll be all she wrote. Heavy rain and mudslides appear to be the biggest threat with this system as it dissipates over the mountains.
A fun fact about Danielle is that it is the earliest fourth named storm on record in the Atlantic and we could be well on our way to seeing our earliest fifth named storm, too!
Of more interest, at least to me, is what the models are beginning to hone in on in about 10 days. For a couple of consecutive runs in a row, the GFS model continues to indicate a healthy tropical storm developing in the central gulf by around July 1st.
I want to emphasize that this is model fantasy land. The chances of the models accurately forecasting the path of any potential storm correctly this far out is nearly impossible. That said, Tropical Storm Colin was fairly accurately predicted well in advance so it'll be interesting to see if this comes to fruition.
Here's a look at some of the models provided by Tropicaltidbits.com
While nearly every model run of the GFS since Saturday has shown some sort of development in the gulf by the first of July, the potential landfall locations, per the models, have ranged from northern Mexico to Louisiana to the west coast of Florida, with the Florida coast being the more favored as of late.
It is also noteworthy that the blessed Euro model doesn't show jack diddley squat developing in this time frame. The Euro is the more trusted of the global models so I think this does deserve credence.
We'll continue to monitor the models this week but currently there is absolutely nothing to worry about. If anything were to develop, it would be named 'Earl' and would become the earliest 'E' storm on record, as long as it forms before July 11th.
I can hear all the Dixie Chick parodies now: "Goodbye Earl!"