Here's your Tampa area weather forecast for late Thursday into Friday morning, with a look at conditions as Hurricane Irma approaches.

  • Front stalled north
  • Irma a few days away
  • Sunday looking wet and windy

The front to our north has stalled, so while it’s cooler and less humid in Georgia, we have the same hot and humid air mass. 

That will continue into Friday, with a 50 percent coverage of scattered storms, especially in the afternoon to evening. In the evening those storms will move west toward the gulf.

Saturday will be similar, but with breezier winds as Irma inches closer. There will be scattered storms that move westward across the state and head toward the gulf.

Irma appears likely to have at least some impact on our weather -- it’s a matter of finding the exact details. The farther Irma stays east, the better our weather will be.  The farther Irma moves west, the worse our weather will be. 

We’ve been saying for the past week that the variables in the atmosphere are constantly changing and evolving so therefore our computer models would also fluctuate as we got closer.  Sure enough, yesterday they shifted a little to the east, but today they shifted a little back to the west. 

If this storm wasn’t near land it wouldn’t matter, but since it’s coming near us those fine details will matter a lot when it decides to move north. 

At this time our best guess is that we will be on the western side of the storm as it barely slides by to our east.  That would mean a wet, windy Sunday, but the strongest winds likely staying to our east along with the heaviest rains. 

However, if the track trends farther west we will have to adjust our heavier rains into our area and the stronger winds would also shift west.  The one small positive, if Irma comes up through Florida across Alligator Alley it would be weakening along that path, since it would be over land instead of water.

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