Another warm, humid and unsettled afternoon is in the forecast for Central Florida as we remain positioned in the warm sector of a developing winter storm system that is strengthening over the Midwest. As you head out to finalize your holiday preparations, expect showers around the area with wet weather in the forecast between now and late on Christmas Eve. 

The parent area of low pressure center of the developing winter storm system will swing a cold front across the Florida Peninsula late on Christmas Eve with our greatest chance for rain and storms during the late afternoon and evening on Wednesday. Once the cold front moves to our south early Thursday morning, cooler and drier air will settle in along with clearing skies and cooler conditions for Christmas Day.

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View: StormTracker 13 Interactive Radar
Forecast continues below

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Through early Christmas Eve, plan on cloudy skies with occasional showers or even a thunderstorm embedded in our warm southerly wind flow. The best chance for significant rain will be north of the I-4 corridor, while the rest of the area still see quite a few passing showers.  Even with the thick cloud cover, high temperatures are running nearly 10 degrees above the average, in the low 80s for most inland locations. Southerly winds pulling in warmer air and higher humidity will become breezy at times, up to 15 to 20 mph. On Christmas Eve a line of heavy rain with stronger thunderstorms will approach from the west ahead of the approaching cold front. Some of these showers and storms may contain heavy downpours, frequent lightning and gusty winds, which could impact travelers on area roadways starting in the afternoon and continuing into the overnight hours Christmas Morning.

Most of the rain will have tapered by sunrise Christmas morning aside from some lingering clouds in Brevard County.  While we won’t see a significant cool down this the passage of this front, there will be a drop in temperatures by Christmas morning to the low 50s as winds switch to the northwest. Highs will return closer to the seasonal average for this time in December by the end of the week, but we will have a brief period of cooler weather with highs in the middle to upper 60s on Christmas Day.