Summer Weather Coming to an End? Not So Fast

It was just a slight drop in humidity, but for those living in Florida’s soupy, summer air, mornings felt just a bit cooler, afternoons less like you were taking a beating from the heat.

Some dry air worked its way down the state at the start of this week. While most remained to the north, enough reached as far as the Tampa Bay area to remind us that fall is coming.

For a while, the worst of the summer seems to be gone.

Temperatures should stay in the low 90s, and the heat index shouldn’t crack 100. Mornings are supposed to be in the low 70s and even high 60s in places.

And while not truly hayride weather, those conditions are far better than the heat advisories, mornings in the 80s and heat index readings topping 105 that we saw in August.

Lower humidity is a major element in the change in weather. Drier air lets the nights cool more and dampens the heat index through the afternoon.

But it’s still September and still technically summer for another week, so even slight breaks in the weather are only temporary.

More moist air is filtering over the state and will return by the weekend. Forecasts don’t call for the humidity to quite reach the oppressive level of mid summer but you may notice the change when you step outside.

Along with the increase in humidity, rain chances go back up to almost summer levels of 30 percent from Friday through Monday.

Forecasters say a cold front is supposed to make it across the Northeast and move south over the next few days but won’t have the muscle to be felt in Pasco County.

It is far too early to begin looking for fall in West Central Florida. Summer doesn’t officially end until Sept. 23, and for Florida, some measurements keep summer in place until November.

In “Florida Weather,” Morton D. Winsberg cites the first time the average daily temperature drops below 60 degrees two days in a row as the start of fall.

For the northern half of the state’s peninsula, that usually doesn’t happen until the first week in November, though in the years examined, it did happen as early as Oct. 18.

Regardless, we’ve got quite a way to go.

The average temperature in Tampa this month has been 82 degrees.

As for the tropics, storms seem to be taking a breather after the quick flurry of activity of Irene through Nate.

The National Hurricane Center is watching a small disturbance in the Atlantic Ocean but at this point forecasters give it almost no chance of developing into a storm.

But forecasters warn that the peak of the season still stretches on another two or three weeks.

Then from about the first week or second week in October, the birthplace of tropical storms shifts from the Atlantic to the western Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico.