Westerly winds across the state have resulted in an earlier start to thunderstorms near the Emerald and Forgotten Coasts Tuesday, stretching southward along the Nature Coast and into the Tampa/St. Pete metropolitan areas. These storms will gradually develop eastward toward the Orlando and Melbourne areas Tuesday afternoon.

Additional thunderstorms will tend to congregate from near Melbourne to Vero Beach, West Palm, and Fort Lauderdale as the stronger Gulf coast sea breeze meets up with the slower-moving Atlantic coast sea breeze. Any thunderstorm is capable of producing frequent lightning and torrential rain. Isolated pockets of damaging wind are possible from the strongest cells.

A deeper-than-usual trough of low pressure over the Southeastern United States that is responsible for this pattern is expected to continue on Wednesday. Storms that develop early on Wednesday morning near the Gulf coast are likely to spread eastward and meet with the Atlantic coast sea breeze close to the I-95 corridor. A few of the storms are capable of blinding downpours and brief damaging wind gusts where boundaries from the thunderstorms and sea breezes collide. Even though scattered storms are possible anywhere in the state, the most concentrated thunderstorms will be from roughly the I-4 corridor southward on Wednesday.