Another hot and sunny morning greeted us with blue skies overhead. Out to the west, towering thunderstorms were already looming on the horizon, sitting around 30 miles offshore over the Gulf of Mexico. Once the morning swim was out of the way, we started truckin', heading inland to Zolfo Springs, then southwards to Arcadia. Large and very active thunderstorms were developing on the western side of Lake Okeechobee, so we decided to head even further south into northern Charlotte and Glade counties. However, by the time we arrived the storms were dissipating.

On checking the radar, it became obvious that the east coast sea breeze was trampling westwards across the state at a rate of knots, and was firing widespread storms to our north across Highlands and Osceola counties. We also noted that the west coast sea breeze was slowly moving eastwards and inland. Anticipating a major boundary clash, we headed back northwards towards home. On the way, we passed through a developing line of storms just behind the east coast boundary, which left flooding in Arcadia as torrential rain pounded the town.

By now it was early evening and the developing line of storms had formed a squall line feature which was accelerating westwards towards the Gulf Coast. We'd seen this before back in 2006 and knew that it would develop very nasty thunderstorms as it met the west coast sea breeze which was still close to the Gulf coast. We headed to the Sunshine Skyway, after a brief stop to observe the approaching gust front. With great views to the south and the north, we were struggling to decide which was best as we stopped in the picnic area to the south of the bridge. However, a very large, very evil-looking thunderstorm began to take shape over northern Tampa Bay, heading towards the city of Tampa. In order to get a better look, we headed across the Skyway to the northern picnic area.

The thunderstorm became severe as it pounded Tampa and northern parts of Tampa Bay, including Pinellas County. Reports of golf ball hail and wind gusts to 70mph were reported. We kept ourselves just out of the storm, thankfully, and as a result enjoyed spectacular views of the most striking gust front/shelf cloud we'd ever seen. This was heading slowly southwards towards our location, lit from within by frequent cloud-to-water lightning. Winds were relentlessly blowing at around 30-40mph in out location, first from the south, then from the north as the gust front approached.

After an hour or so, the storm slowly weakened, and we decided to head back to base to enjoy evening dinner. Whilst we were out chasing, Bradenton picked up a small storm, which deposited 9.1mm in about an hour in our rain gauge.

As darkness fell, lightning was still lighting up the western sky, as a few thunderstorms continued to rumble away about 40 miles west of the Gulf Coast.