Photo courtesy Ben Cooper, Spaceflight Now

This morning on a small piece of land off of Florida's east coast, the space shuttle is being fueled for a 3:36pm PDT launch slated for later today. But this time of year in Florida, thunderstorms develop nearly every afternoon. And NASA's weather criteria...those weather conditions that need to be met in order to launch...are lengthy, to say the least. So those summer storms frequently ground summer shuttle missions.

But today looks different. The atmosphere is incredibly moist...so storms could develop. But they probably won't. A large upper-level high is in place across the southeastern US. That means, basically, there is a large area of sinking air. For a storm to develop, the air needs to be rising. So that upper-level high, and its sinking air, is the exact opposite of what a developing thunderstorm needs to survive. Storms will struggle to develop as a result on this August afternoon.

And it's not just that. Even if a few storms do develop over the peninsula of Florida, the steering flow is east to west. So those winds will tend to push any thunderstorms away from the space center. You can see this setup in the image below.

Bottom line - the shuttle launch should not be hampered by the weather today. Latest numbers from NASA say an 80% chance of good weather for the launch.

If you'd like to actually track what's happening out at Cape Canaveral, check out this website. It's updated frequently, and says what is happening...in nearly real-time...over in Florida with this shuttle mission. Always an amazing thing, in my opinion...putting people in space...just amazing.