Here's your Tampa area weather forecast for late Thursday into Friday morning, with a look at the weekend ahead.

  • Drier air dominating
  • High heat indices
  • Big change starting Sunday

A batch of drier air moved into the area the past couple days, which is why we’ve seen a limited number of storms. The storms we have seen have been very heavy with abundant lightning, but they’ve been very limited and total coverage has been low.

Skies will go between mostly clear and partly cloudy overnight into early Friday morning. There is a small chance for an isolated storm during this time.

There will be a few storms that start very early in the morning along the coast and in the nearshore gulf waters. Morning lows will be in the mid to upper 70s, but low 80s right along the beach.

Friday will again feature a low coverage of thunderstorms, but where they pop up they will be very heavy with intense lightning. There will be a few isolated storms near the coast in the morning, followed by a few propagating inland during the afternoon and moving eastward to the other side of the state by the evening.

The coverage will be on the low end at about 20 percent. Therefore, expect hot highs again in the low to mid 90s with a heat index easily above 100.

Friday night will be mostly quiet and warm, with lows in the upper 70s to near 80.

Dry air will still impact our forecast into Saturday also, but the coverage of storms will slowly increase, with a 40 percent chance of scattered storms coming back into the area. Again, that day they will tend to start near the coast and propagate inland during the afternoon with an eastward movement.

Highs will be in the low to mid 90s.

Big changes are on the way from Sunday into Monday as a cold front moves into the state, resulting in much higher rain chances coming back into the area.

———————————————

———————————————

  • LIVE interactive Klystron 9 map
  • Custom Safety Net storm alerts
  • LIVE interactive Real Time traffic
  • Upload pictures to Bay News 9 from the app