ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Here's your Tampa area weather forecast for late Wednesday into Thursday morning, with a look at conditions through the weekend.

  • Fewer storms for now
  • Heavier rains Saturday
  • Low passing Sunday

Atmospheric moisture decreased today, resulting in less coverage of showers and storms. There were still some showers with the sea breeze. Those will end with skies clearing out and lows in the low to mid 70s for Thursday morning.

Moisture will steadily increase Thursday into Friday.

Thursday will start sunny and dry, but clouds will develop and then scattered storms will form during the afternoon. Highs will be in the upper 80s to near 90. The coverage of storms will be at about 40 percent.

Any scattered storms that form will tend to drift west toward the gulf in the evening. They will die down at night, with skies clearing and lows in the low to mid 70s.

Friday will be partly sunny with increasing atmospheric moisture, so we expect the rain chance to increase into the 50 to 60 percent range.

Friday night will see some lingering storms before they die down overnight. Lows will be in the low to mid 70s.

The biggest change will be this weekend, when we expect higher rain chances.

The tropical low we’ve been talking about will finally start drifting north Saturday. No matter where it goes, it will push a lot of moisture up into our area, so expect much higher rain chances Saturday and it might even result in a washout type of day.

For now, we’ll go with an 80 percent coverage of rain likely. That will keep highs down in the low 80s.

Sunday, on the other hand, is highly dependent on where the moisture then gets pushed after the low passes.

The low might drift west of us, which would still result in moisture streaming up into our area. But the low might move east of us, which would result in drier air moving in and rain chances dropping Sunday into Monday.

Stay tuned as that part of the forecast will ultimately change one way or another.

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The seven-day forecast