Narrative:

Flight crew briefed planned routing up the east coast of florida to avoid narrow strong line of thunderstorms moving onshore and across florida southeast of the panhandle. Storms were initially forecast to be weaker but developed quickly with tops near FL350. ATC rerouted us up west side of florida to cty szw before turning to ZZZ. Wsi at the time forecasted gaps and breaks along the new route that we could navigate through more easily than the rapidly solidifying line to the east. We coordinated this new route with dispatch; and flight attendants were briefed that we would plan to have them delay service until we passed the weather and that we would communicate a time for them to be in their jumpseats. Passengers also informed of the safety delay in service for the forecasted weather and possible associated turbulence.on taxi out we had to re-contact ATC for additional route verification; apparently when the dispatcher updated our new route they only changed the revised segment to ZZZ and deleted everything after causing a plan that had us proceeding direct to ZZZ1 and descending to FL260 passing ZZZ. We coordinated the original routing after ZZZ with ATC and we took off after a 15 minute delay sorting out the clearance issue. Dispatch informed of the error and they updated our flight plan to provide us with an accurate release. A final look at wsi showed the line of narrow thundershowers were building higher and stronger to the east and lower and less organized to the west of and approaching our planned route to szw then ZZZ. Frustratingly; neither one of us had adequate wi-fi signal to keep a continuous wsi update - this has been a common issue I hope gets rectified soon. Shortly after reaching our cruise alt of FL320; ATC advised a turn to the northeast to cty VOR then szw as the storms moving onshore in the southwest florida panhandle were intensifying. Approximately 80 miles; or 10 minutes; prior to reaching cty VOR I directed the fas to be seated and made a PA to the passengers reminding them to stay seated with their seatbelts fastened as well and that it might take up to 30 minutes before we could safely let them back up; weather permitting.onboard weather radar showed a solid yet narrow band of moderate rain just northwest of cty with last forecasted tops of FL250 with higher cells to the west and east of our path. We were IMC passing through the area and following another aircraft on the same routing and altitude with no adverse reports being given. We saw our aircraft send a smooth report. [Five minutes later] we encountered what we considered to be continuous moderate turbulence lasting 20 seconds or so. Autoflight stayed engaged and we had +/- 100 ft deviation until exiting back to smooth air. We observed the OAT change from -46c approaching the weather to -26c during the event and back to -42c passing to the other side. I had the fas check in to confirm no injuries or damage.we received an automatically generated severe report with an rmsg (calculation of average load in a turbulence event) of 0.4. We confirmed that our aircraft did not produce a [report] that would require a maintenance entry and verified that with an ACARS dialogue with [maintenance] and dispatch and mod turbulence PIREP was made at that time as well. We had a clear communication with dispatch that no injuries or damage resulted from the turbulence event and that we would continue on as planned.I believe we could have had better insight into the rapidly intensifying line had we had uninterrupted access to wsi. Our last update was several minutes before reaching the weather. As we passed through the line our onboard weather radar depicted the intensifying cells off to our west; and we coordinated a turn away to the northeast to compensate; but the event was short-lived and we proceeded on course back to swz with smooth air.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A320 flight crew reported encountering severe turbulence in cruise and stated he could have better avoided the significant weather if his WSI WiFi signal had been more reliable.

Narrative: Flight crew briefed planned routing up the east coast of Florida to avoid narrow strong line of thunderstorms moving onshore and across Florida southeast of the panhandle. Storms were initially forecast to be weaker but developed quickly with tops near FL350. ATC rerouted us up west side of Florida to CTY SZW before turning to ZZZ. WSI at the time forecasted gaps and breaks along the new route that we could navigate through more easily than the rapidly solidifying line to the east. We coordinated this new route with Dispatch; and Flight attendants were briefed that we would plan to have them delay service until we passed the weather and that we would communicate a time for them to be in their jumpseats. Passengers also informed of the safety delay in service for the forecasted weather and possible associated turbulence.On taxi out we had to re-contact ATC for additional route verification; apparently when the Dispatcher updated our new route they only changed the revised segment to ZZZ and deleted everything after causing a plan that had us proceeding direct to ZZZ1 and descending to FL260 passing ZZZ. We coordinated the original routing after ZZZ with ATC and we took off after a 15 minute delay sorting out the clearance issue. Dispatch informed of the error and they updated our flight plan to provide us with an accurate release. A final look at WSI showed the line of narrow thundershowers were building higher and stronger to the east and lower and less organized to the west of and approaching our planned route to SZW then ZZZ. Frustratingly; neither one of us had adequate Wi-Fi signal to keep a continuous WSI update - this has been a common issue I hope gets rectified soon. Shortly after reaching our cruise alt of FL320; ATC advised a turn to the northeast to CTY VOR then SZW as the storms moving onshore in the southwest Florida panhandle were intensifying. Approximately 80 miles; or 10 minutes; prior to reaching CTY VOR I directed the FAs to be seated and made a PA to the passengers reminding them to stay seated with their seatbelts fastened as well and that it might take up to 30 minutes before we could safely let them back up; weather permitting.Onboard weather radar showed a solid yet narrow band of moderate rain just northwest of CTY with last forecasted tops of FL250 with higher cells to the west and east of our path. We were IMC passing through the area and following another aircraft on the same routing and altitude with no adverse reports being given. We saw our aircraft send a smooth report. [Five minutes later] we encountered what we considered to be continuous moderate turbulence lasting 20 seconds or so. Autoflight stayed engaged and we had +/- 100 ft deviation until exiting back to smooth air. We observed the OAT change from -46c approaching the weather to -26c during the event and back to -42c passing to the other side. I had the FAs check in to confirm no injuries or damage.We received an automatically generated severe report with an RMSG (calculation of average load in a turbulence event) of 0.4. We confirmed that our aircraft did not produce a [report] that would require a maintenance entry and verified that with an ACARS dialogue with [Maintenance] and Dispatch and MOD turbulence PIREP was made at that time as well. We had a clear communication with Dispatch that no injuries or damage resulted from the turbulence event and that we would continue on as planned.I believe we could have had better insight into the rapidly intensifying line had we had uninterrupted access to WSI. Our last update was several minutes before reaching the weather. As we passed through the line our onboard weather radar depicted the intensifying cells off to our west; and we coordinated a turn away to the northeast to compensate; but the event was short-lived and we proceeded on course back to SWZ with smooth air.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.