I agree Eric.. the peninsula is narrow enough to provide nearly direct access to the energy. Something I found as amazing as the increase is that Fay did what she did while being seriously suppressed from the west. To my eye, almost all of the energy that wrapped around the center of circulation came from the Atlantic, and had to survive a 180 degree turn while still holding energy. I wish I understood the dynamics better.. I'm working on that. Doc Masters supposed in his blog that Okeechobee lake helped provide the energy to sustain the rather well formed and tight eye. Reports said Okeechobee was at 91.5 f which is up there in temp, but it is shallow so little sustained potential existed. I am sure it helped, but the real power was from the Atlantic.. imo. Well, we are on day five of this event and it is not finished yet. Fay has stayed stalled overnight, but began some westward motion a couple hours ago. Rain totals away from the coast are not devastating on a large scale, but I'll bet the flooded houses would argue that. First, current at 0830 est, here is the Jacksonville radar, watch as the eye passes over G-ville; It looks to me like the eye is going through a regeneration phase, and it is getting bigger. I think the first energy from the Gulf of Mexico is arriving at the inner banding and the storm is reconfiguring. The forecast is kind of iffy.. no shock there eh.. Fay did not earn the nick "The Joker" for nothing. Right now it appears that Fay will stay enough on land to disrupt development and that is great news to those on the coast.
The theory I've heard is that it "fed" off of the warm waters in the Everglades and in Lake Okeechobee. Best wishes to all you guys up north, I hear that Gators and Snakes have been swimming around the flooded neighborhoods.
Indeed. Now it's worth hand-wringing over, especially since it's stalled. It'll disperse at some point, but some kind of atmospheric shift needs to happen first. At least the aquifers should get a nice boost from all this.
We got off light in Palm Beach County. Didn't even losse power for a minute. Floridas been pretty dry. Recent storms have helped and this big momma is sure to replenish our agua!
It's been raining on and off here in G'ville for about 48 hrs. now...lots of rain. My apt complex had to break out the portable pump for the parking lot. They haven't done in over a year! Only lost power a couple of times, but it was mostly surges/drops and wasn't for more than a few seconds at most. (Did put a damper on our video game playing, though ) Haven't heard of any real damage around here, so that's good. Hopefully it won't sit and strengthen once it gets over the Gulf. Gulf Coast don't need none of that. Edit/Update: Didn't escape totally unscathed, as we caught a rather nasty band on the backend that pretty much wiped out my Sat. and dropped a 3in. tree branch on the wife's car. Thankfully it only caught the front headlight area, but it's still going to need some work before I can put in a new headlight. At least no one was hurt, and the area doesn't have any flooding/power problems. There's always something to be thankful for...
It started here about noon, tapered off some, then started pouring and it still is. (it's 11:02 pm now) We need it so bad
Fay has finally left the state. I predict that Fay will be the second Tropical storm to have it's name retired. I think the final count is nine deaths which is significant in that it suggests that the storm wasn't taken seriously enough. Most notably I think, by the beach-goers that perished. In the end Fay single handedly brought us out of a pretty serious drought. I PRAY that Okeechobee lake levels do not cause the army corpse engineers to open the water control structures into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries again. I can see them freaking out if another storm threatens.. and surely this year one will. Here is the revised, but not current drought index, the entire state was in the 300-500 range before Fay. Notice Tampa was denied.. I am staggered by the amount of water that Fay dropped and wish I knew a place that calculated that.. just how many acre feet DID fall ? I saved "storm totals" from all around Florida before they recycled them back to zero.. same word.. staggering. In my hurricane archives I cannot find anything to match Fay's tenacity and duration. The nearly four day hurricane of 1878 is about it. I plotted the coordinates onto google earth for clarity. The dots are at six hour intervals. green - tropical storm yellow - hurricane cat 1 orange - hurricane cat 2 My hurricane archives also include tropical depressions and storms, so since as far back as 1851, Fay takes home the cake and ribbon. I'll start with the direction Fay travelled. Take a minute to check these images out, sometimes the "total rain" is skewed because the event happened offshore. Key West; Miami cycled to fresh before any other site, so I missed that one but by looking at the overlaps, you get an idea. Tampa..notice Melbourne got soaked. This is a not totally accurate, they got some, but not a lot of rain yesterday; Next is Jacksonville.. they got clobbered; A look from Charleston SC, the Georgia coast got some serious rain too. Now, over to Valdosta Ga. Tallahassee.. another victim; Red Bay.. notice that this is the only part of the state excepting Tampa, that did not get drought relief. Welll, there ya go, Fay is finished with us and although there are some invests to watch, nothing is threatening or impending at the moment. I hope you enjoyed my coverage of this stuff, I obviously love it, thanks for putting up with me.
We've been getting it good. I'm about 30 miles N. of Columbus, GA and it has been pouring all of yesterday afternoon and this morning. We really need it, so I'm not complaining at all.
thats how i felt too...lake okeechobee was WAY down like 3 ft or so and this storm didn't damage anything....made it rain for 5 days but didn't damage anything around here so it was good.....sad to hear about the 2 people who died though.
I found some new maps of the precip; and here is the important one. This one is driven by the remnants of Fay. It sure looks like Debbie is going to get a LOT of rain the next couple days. She too will go from drought to flooding. Looks to me like you are in the 6 inch area Deb. Get yer galoshes out kiddo.. how ironic that Noah's Ark is on the History channel right now...
It's here alright. It pours, quits, then some mild rain, the sun comes out, goes away, and then the bottom falls out again. We need it so bad tho' it's not going to hurt us to get a little soggy.
We're getting it pretty good. There's tornado watches and warnings all around us. So far, all is fairly quiet here. I hope it stays that way. I love the rain, but hate the severe storms and tornados. I just hope every one stays safe.
Very curious to see how this affects oil prices. They just took a might drop overnight, but that was because the ECB (for the first time) publicly stated that they might lower interest rates. That gave the Dollar a huge boost, which always decreases oil. However, Oil has been very volatile lately as speculators are whipping the market around. Oil could easily go up to the $117 mark if Gustav makes legitimate threats to oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
ya, this is getting ridiculous with these storms.....looks like i'll be getting another monday/tuesday combo off work
Hmm I noticed the image has changed to show a path heading more west than yesterday. Maybe it will get thrown even more west and give us a break after Fay.
It won't likely be penninsular Florida this time, but the entire Gulf is in danger. I am gathering info for a new thread now.
Thankfully it has gone down some more recently, but yes I wasn't thinking of those kind of side effects at first. Let alone the potential dangers to Louisiana once again.
Yeah was like 20 cents cheaper here today than last week. One nice thing about Texas is the gas is cheaper than most of the rest of the country.
