ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Here's your Tampa area weather forecast for late Monday into Tuesday morning, along with a look at conditions through the work week.

  • Wind from east
  • Westward moving storms
  • Hot afternoons

We’re currently in a wind pattern that blows from east to west across the state.

In this pattern our mornings are quiet, but the late day is when we have scattered storms move through the area. They all move westward towards and into the Gulf of Mexico in this pattern.

Skies will clear out overnight into early Tuesday morning.

Lows will be in the low to mid 70s, except for upper 70s by the coast.

This is the time of year when it can be frustrating if you want a taste of autumn, because we rarely get that until sometime later in October.

In this wind pattern we’re in, the other thing to keep in mind is that it typically keeps our sea breeze pinned at the coast. As a result, our high temperatures tend to get hot each afternoon before the cooling storms pass through.

Sure enough, today we had a high again in the mid 90s.

But on the positive is that these evening storms help cool us down going into the night, and the mornings are more comfortable and slightly cooler.

Expect a similar pattern for Tuesday, with a sunny morning followed by a partly cloudy afternoon and a 40 percent coverage of scattered storms that will all move westward towards the gulf in the evening.

Highs will again be in the mid 90s before the storms cool us down.

The winds will shift slightly on Thursday into Friday, bringing in slightly drier air. That will start to dry our atmosphere out a bit and drop our rain chance.