ORLANDO, Fla. – A variety of factors are creating a dreary atmosphere in Central Florida, similar to what we witnessed on Saturday. The weather is expected to remain unchanged tomorrow as none of the elements influencing our local weather patterns appear to be leaving soon.

You’ve probably already noticed the low and mid cloud above our heads today racing east to west across our area.

Powerful winds continue to impact the eastern shores of Florida due to a strong pressure gradient force, causing winds to blow almost straight across our peninsula.

A mix of strong high pressure over the eastern seaboard, notably along the Appalachian mountains and the Mid-Atlantic region to the north, combined with a weak tropical disturbance noted by the National Hurricane Center moving along a weakening frontal boundary over South Florida, ensures the current conditions persist.

The high pressure system is predicted to drift further east into the Western Atlantic in the coming days. However, due to the broad clockwise wind patterns around its center, we can expect gusty conditions and easterly winds through Tuesday or Wednesday.

The mentioned stationary boundary traces the periphery of the high pressure zone. With little to disrupt the flow from the north or the south out of the tropics, a constant stream of moisture continues.

What does this mean for us?

Rain will be in the forecast for tomorrow and the first part of the upcoming week. The nature of this rain differs from the summer patterns, reflecting a distinct mechanism at work.

Sunday will start off with intermittent showers and some light rain, especially the closer you get to our east coast. Then throughout the day, where the sun does manage to break through clouds, thanks to all the available moisture we’ll get even more development of heavier rain bands.

They’ll still be moving mostly east to west across the peninsula, steered by the dominant easterly flow we’ll have hanging with us throughout much of the week.

Because of these breezy and rainy conditions, temperatures will be pretty tame. You’ll notice the humidity, but a lot of us if not all of us won’t succeed in reaching the 90 degree afternoon high. In fact, as October continues on we’ll see less and less of that altogether which is fantastic news.

A lot of these clusters of rainfall won’t be too “high” in terms of vertical extent. Since we’re seeing such fast winds both down where we are, and the higher you go in the atmosphere, they’re unable to really get strong.

The more rain that falls, also keeps the lowest portions of our environment relatively cool. If you think about the atmosphere like a multi-tiered cake, the cooler the first tier is, the less likely storms grow into tiers two and three.

That’s why you probably didn’t see a lot of lightning today, nor hear much in the way of thunder throughout your Saturday. Some areas could see more organized storms try to come together, and then you will get some snapping, crackling, and popping on occasion.

But the main threat between tomorrow and about Wednesday remains water piling up in very short periods of time.

Our next system looks to change things up a bit by Thursday and Friday. Rain chances should start to drop by then, and we’ll start to see periods of more sunshine versus all this almost wintry gloom that we’re dealing with for our current weekend.