Widespread rain in forecast for S. Florida

Get out the umbrellas, folks.

South Florida faces a week with lots of rain and very little sun, thanks to a broad patch of stormy weather in the Gulf of Mexico. That system may strengthen into a tropical cyclone, a strong, rotating system of thunderstorms, less than three weeks before the official start of hurricane season, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Although the system is forecast to head north through the Gulf and not approach South Florida, it’s expected to bring widespread rain to South Florida through the entire week. The National Weather Service issued a flood advisory Sunday night for Miami Beach and the coastal mainland across Biscayne Bay.

The wettest days were expected to be Sunday and Monday, with the rain become more sporadic through the rest of the week, according to the National Weather Service in Miami. But the atmospheric moisture spread by the system in the Gulf makes it unlikely there will be any good days this week to go to the beach.

“It won’t be raining all the time, but there will be showers and thunderstorms around throughout the day,” said Chris Fisher, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “Even though it’s expected to go northward into the Gulf, we’re still going to have plenty of tropical moisture through the week.”

The rainy season officially begins Tuesday. Hurricane season officially begins June 1.

The ragged cluster of thunderstorms in the Gulf has a 30 percent chance of forming a cyclone over the next two days and a 40 percent chance over the next five days. Tropical cyclones are classified by wind speed, with the weakest called tropical depressions, which have wind speeds of less than 38 mph. If the system strengthened beyond that, which the hurricane center has not predicted, it would become the first named storm of the season, Tropical Storm Alberto.

South Florida’s rain totals will be in the inches, forecasters say.

Here are some of the local amounts of rain meteorologists are expecting to fall from 8 a.m. Sunday through 8 a.m. Wednesday:

2.89 inches in Fort Lauderdale

3.05 inches in Boca Raton 3.4 inches in Jupiter 2.69 inches in Miami 2.49 inches in Homestead.