PANAMA CITY — A scathing summer is making way for a cooler fall in Bay County as a cold front moves through the area.
Oct. 10 begins the slide into cooler temperatures. A low of 60 kicks in with an anticipated high of only 81, according to the National Weather Service. The day is also expected to be fairly windy, with gusts of up to 25 mph expected.
Going into the weekend, Oct. 11 and Oct. 12, look for lows in the upper 50s and highs in the lower 80s. This high is slightly warmer and the low is cooler than the historical average temperatures for this time in October.
On Oct. 13, temperatures rise slightly with a high of 86 and a low of 60 expected. Unfortunately, the NWS Tallahassee forecasting office says in their area forecast discussion that warmer and more humid conditions are expected to return on the other end of the cold front.
AccuWeather doesn’t expect gears to significantly shift in a cooler direction until Oct. 21, when highs in the 70s become common.
Throughout the rest of the seven-day forecast period, rain is not anticipated. The NWS Tallahassee forecasting office says this provides little relief for ongoing drought conditions.
A U.S. Drought Monitor update from Oct. 2 places Bay County in moderate drought conditions, with severe drought conditions lingering in the northern parts of the panhandle. The Keetch-Byram Drought Index, which is used as an indicator of how dry potential fuels for fires are, is still relatively high for Bay County.
The relative humidity is still somewhat high, leading the Florida Forest Service to indicate fire danger as low for the area.
The National Hurricane Center is tracking one named storm and one disturbance. Tropical Storm Jerry is expected to be another fish storm, curving out into the Atlantic Ocean. A disturbance off the coast of Southern Mexico in the Gulf has a 10% chance of cyclone formation within seven days.
Meanwhile, the Climate Prediction Center’s tropical hazard outlook has some predictions that may be relevant to Gulf Coast residents. They say there is above a 40% chance of tropical development in the Caribbean Sea and the southwestern Gulf of Mexico over the next two weeks.
This article originally appeared on The News Herald: Temperatures set to drop in Bay County. Here’s a breakdown of the forecast:
Reporting by Dylan Gentile, Panama City News Herald / The News Herald
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
