Meteorologist: Zach Maloch
•9/3/2026
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA (WINK) — Today has been yet another active weather day after a consecutive stretch from back through the last few days of August until now. Confirmed waterspouts, heavy rains, and frequent lightning characterized the afternoon and early evening hours. Tomorrow into Saturday looks fairly similar. However, a few changes are ahead that we'll spend a little time breaking down here.
While abundant tropical moisture will stay present over Florida and much of the Southeast U.S., a disturbance that's been helping agitate the atmosphere will start to put some extra distance between us and it tomorrow. That changes the way our wind flow behaves over southwest FL.
For your Friday, expect early rains along the coastline as the sun comes up. A few of those clusters of showers will try to push inland before the end of your morning commute.
The afternoon hours give way to more inland storms trying to fire up as we crest to the warmest part of the afternoon. Temperatures will top out in the low 90s, with a stray mid-90-degree peak in some areas if you don't receive as much of the beneficial cloud cover.
Because we're still feeling the push of winds out of the southwest, what storms do get going will have a desire to head north and northeast.
We'll quiet down into the evening hours, tracking the winds that come out of our thunderstorms that may spark an extra patch of rain or thunder and lightning after sunset. We'll be monitoring closely for any hazards that could pose travel delays in the air or on the road.
Saturday and Sunday we see even more change. We return to our traditional sea breeze-driven afternoon showers and storms. That means a large majority of our inland folks will see the rains during the afternoon and evening time frame.
They'll be more sporadic as well, since we won't have any larger weather players on the field at the helm. Next week, believe it or not, we more or less run this pattern back again.
A weak front comes down, leaves some energy and moisture behind, then Mother Nature decides to mind the gap and seal it over the northern Gulf and Southeast United States.
No tropical development is expected over the next 7 days. WINK Weather Authority meteorologists will be watching the tropical Atlantic for a low chance of development late next week.
