Surface winds were beginning to turn around to a more south or south-easterly direction during the day, which meant that we could focus our sights on storms that should develop closer to home. Huge areas of thunderstorms across the Gulf of Mexico overnight had left extensive cloud across Florida during the morning, which even produced bits of pieces of dribbly rain as we had our morning dip in the pool. The temperature fell to 19°C overnight which was several degrees lower than the preceeding nights.

By lunchtime, the sun had started to appear and things began to heat up. We headed for the coast just west of Bradenton, and spent a short while soaking up the rays on Bradenton beach. Beyond the warm, turquoise waters of the Gulf were ink black skies and further storms rumbed off the coast. Just behind us inland, the west coast sea breeze began its slow journey inland, and the first signatures of thunderstorm development took shape.

We crossed the highway and parked up beside an inland lagoon, facing eastwards and inland. A line of clouds gradually increased in size before developing into impressive thunderstorms which stretched south-west to north-east, just to our south across Sarasota. However, high cloud from the Gulf of Mexico storms returned, running over the top of the new storms and casting ominious shadows over them. Rather than the white, cauliflower tops we'd been used to, the storms were now a nasty looking mix of black and grey.

We followed the storms by driving south into Sarasota, where one particular updraft began lowering to the ground. We only learned a short time later that this had produced a very large waterspout (tornado over water) just south-west of Sarasota and had been severe warned. So near yet so far. The rest of our day was spent driving east to Arcadia then north to Zolfo Springs, hoping to find more thunderstorm action. Sadly, the earlier storms had spread out to produce areas of moderate rain right across the south of Florida, so the day's action was over.

We headed back to Bradenton by early evening for dinner and a late swim, both of which were combined with beers. Not the best of storm chasing days today but we took comfort in the fact we still knew how to put ourselves in the right place for waterspouts, even though we didn't see this one!