Coming Days See Both Sides of Florida Weather: Heat, Humidity

As much as the weekend seemed like we were the bottom layer in a clam bake, the coming workweek offers little improvement.

We’ll get the best of Florida’s summer weather: a combination of bone-melting heat and soupy humidity.

They will mix together into a heat index that will be cracking 100 in most places across West Central Florida, including Pasco and Hillsborough counties each day in the coming week.

A few places closer to the coast may see a degree or two break on occasional afternoons, probably enough to make it feel like it’s only 99.

More places are likely to see it feel close to 105.

The National Weather Service doesn’t really show this pattern breaking soon with only a few degrees change in temperatures through the week.

Forecasts call for temperatures in the lower to middle 90s in the afternoon and upper 70s before dawn.

At this point the weather service isn’t issuing any heat advisories locally because the forecast conditions don’t meet the criteria.

You need the heat index to top 105 at least three hours and nightly lows above 80 for two consecutive days.

That doesn’t mean we should be embarrassed about preferring to stay inside during the coming week.

Each day, the heat index will start nudging 100 about noon and build until about 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., when it starts dropping. About 6 p.m. you’re back to feeling like it’s less than a hundred degrees but only by a degree or two.

The nights won’t offer much relief when it still feels like about 95 at sunset and the humidity keeps it simmering until about 4 a.m. when the coolest part of the day arrives in the middle 70s.

Dawn will show up with 100 percent humidity and start another day that could be much like the day before.

A string of days with nights offering no serious break from the heat are more taxing on people than one or two days of extreme heat.

Despite the ample humidity, forecasters drop the rainfall chances to about 30 percent, but summer means it can rain any time and any place here.

And it can dump a lot of rain quickly.

The only possible change, and that’s mainly in how much rain we get, is a tropical wave moving from the Caribbean Sea toward Florida.

It probably won’t amount to much. The National Hurricane Center gives it almost no chance of developing, especially because it spent much of Sunday over Hispaniola.

Still, some models expect it to move off Cuba by the middle of the week and reach South Florida. Forecasters bumped rain chances for Wednesday.

They didn’t, however, predict much change in the overall weather for the week.

This is part of the same baking the rest of the country’s getting from a stubborn area of high pressure sitting over most of the nation.

But we’re at the edge of the ring of high pressure and don’t get its full weight. We’re not getting a heat index of 115 degrees.

And, we have water on three sides that moderates temperatures slightly and provides some air movement, even if it gives about as much relief as a barber’s hot towel.