Our first full day in the Sunshine State started rather cool, after the previous evening's storms knocked temperatures on the head. Conditions were very hazy with lots of high cirrus cloud. After a morning swim and breakfast, we kicked off the day with a trip to Lake Manatee State Park, just a dozen or so miles east of our villa in Bradenton. The park is typical of Florida's natural wilderness, with moss hanging from the trees and lots of colourful wildlife. The wildlife took a liking to Bren in particular, who was munched on by red ants, black ants, a wasp and some hideous black fly.

During the couple of hours we spent in the park, the west coast sea breeze fired up small popcorn storms just to our west. Numerous rumbles of thunder were heard and the sky gradually became filled with towering cumulus. At around 3pm, we decided to leave behind the small storms and head south-east into the interior parts of the Peninsula. Large thunderstorms on the Atlantic coast were sending huge outflow boundaries westwards in our direction, whilst the west coast sea breeze was continuing to move slowly inland. It looked like a collision would occur in our target area, and thus the thunderstorm potential was high.

We drove south-eastwards through Manatee County, and onwards through Hardee County into DeSoto County, where we settled just east of Arcadia. Here, strong thunderstorms were developing, and we parked up to the west of a particularly good storm which was producing frequent lightning. The storm threw a gust front at us which, on arrival, pelted the car with sand and debris with wind speeds of around 30-40mph. Some heavy rain was also witnessed, although the storm quickly began to fall apart.

To our north, over northern Hardee and Polk counties, skies were still clear with strong sunshine, and it looked as if two or more outflow/sea-breeze boundaries could collide over the area. Therefore, we headed back north again, stopping off near Zolfo Springs to watch another short-lived but intense pulse thunderstorm. We were keeping just a couple of miles behind a north-west moving outflow boundary. This generated storm after storm as it moved north, but we were managing to keep ourselves tucked into the clear gap immediately behind the boundary and ahead of the new storms which were firing behind us. We eventually arrived in the area north of Bartow, Polk County. The area was very urban and thus the potential for parking up with good views were very limited. It was now mid-evening and light was fading, so despite being surrounded by active (and briefly severe) thunderstorms, we decided to head for home. We kept almost directly underneath the outflow boundary as it moved westwards towards the Gulf Coast, eventually overtaking it and arriving home in time to see it pass over our villa, bringing gusty winds but no rain.

A good start to the chase trip with short-lived but quite intense thunderstorms. The theory behind outflow boundaries was working well.