Southwest Florida has undoubtedly turned the corner on dry season. And though rain amounts have varied widely over the past three days, there is much more to come for the state’s west coast this week. As rain opportunities increase and rain gauges get dusted off after our arid spring, the forecast looks promising for the region to shake off the drought status we’ve been in for months. WHAT’S HAPPENING? The transition from dry season to rainy season is a process. What’s helping the transition this year though is a large tropical air mass slowly moving from the Gulf toward Florida. This slice of the tropics is water-logged, meaning it contains a lot of what’s known as precipitable water. Precipitable water, or PWAT for short, is a meteorological term identifying air masses able to generate a lot of rain. The higher the PWAT, the more rain one can theoretically squeeze out of the atmosphere. Right now for example, the PWAT value in southern California where the air is dry is about .13. This means if you were to condense all of the water vapor in a column of the air in California, you’d get .13″ of rain in the window of time you’re looking at. Today in Southwest Florida, our PWAT values are around 2.3. And so, if we were able to rain out all of the available water vapor, 2.3″ of rain would fall. As we work through the forecast tonight, on Tuesday, and through Wednesday, PWAT values for South Florida vary from 2 to…