After a mostly sunny holiday weekend, South Florida can expect to see showers and storms return this week.
Much of the region already has seen moderate to heavy showers this morning, making for a wet morning commute.
South Florida's Tuesday forecast calls for a cloudy skies with afternoon highs in the mid 80s, evening readings in the low 70s and a 60 percent chance of rain. It also should be breezy with gusts to 25 mph.
Because of the winds, beware of rip currents at the beaches. The rain chance remains relatively high for the rest of the workweek.
Central Florida's Tuesday forecast: Mostly sunny and breezy with highs in the upper 80s and lows in the upper 60s.
May hurricane: Today is the 150th anniversary of the only recorded hurricane to hit the U.S. coastline during the month of May -and, of course, it struck Florida.
Here's a more complete account, courtesy of Jeff Master's blog at Weather Underground:
The May 28, 1863 hurricane struck northwest Florida, killing at least 72 people. The hurricane hit nearly two weeks earlier than the next earliest U.S. landfalling hurricane, Hurricane Alma of June 9, 1966.
(Tropical Storm Beryl of May 28, 2012 came close to being a May hurricane, bringing 70 mph winds to the coast near Jacksonville Beach, Florida.)
According to a new paper by hurricane historians Mike Chenoweth and C. J. Mock, accepted for publication in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society:
"Among the most unusual and unexpected hurricanes in United States history is the only hurricane to make landfall in the month of May.
"This recently re-discovered storm that struck northwest Florida on 28 May 1863 created a natural disaster in the area that became lost to history because it was embedded in a much larger and important manmade event, in this case the U.S. Civil War.
"We document the arrival of this storm both historically and meteorologically and anachronistically name it Hurricane “Amanda” in honor of the Union ship driven ashore by the hurricane.
"The hurricane revealed deficiencies and strengths in combat readiness by both sides.
"Meteorologically, the storm nearly achieved major hurricane status at landfall and its absence from modern data bases of tropical cyclone activity is a useful reminder to users of important gaps in our knowledge of tropical cyclones even in the best-sampled storm basins."Copyright © 2015, The Baltimore Sun