Rainfall Measured in Feet!!!

Tropical Storm Fay may not go down as a hurricane but it will go down as one of the most rain producing tropical storms to hit the US since Allison in 2001... Allison pounded the Houston area with near 40 inches of rain in some parts of SE Texas... By the way Allison is the only tropical storm to ever have it's named retired by the NHC... Hurricane Agnes in 1972 was a minimal hurricane at landfall in the Florida panhandle only to become one of the most rain producing storms for the North East US... It actually was the fist billion dollar hurricane in US history... Obviously not for its 75 mph winds at landfall but for its torrential rains that killed 48 people in Pennsylvania... Ironically both of these storms occurred in June!

With Fay the totals to this point have been absolutely amazing across the north east coast of Florida... Melbourne Beach received 25.03", Cocoa Beach 24.19", and Satellite Beach 22.40"... Things along the panhandle of Florida are going down fast!!! The Tallahasee area has been getting pounded with reports already over 20 inches widespread across the region... Just look at the radar image out of KTLH.... Tallahassee's Leon County is really getting hit hard right now... With reports over 20 inches so far and another 12 inches plus expected you could see some areas receiving near 3 feet of rain... That's approaching tropical storm Allison levels!!!

Unfortunately things look to get worst before they get better... Fay is expected to keep moving agonizingly slow through the Panhandle of Florida, South Alabama, and South Mississippi... Eventually Fay should get picked up and start to accelerate north and east by Wednesday/Thursday of next week... The problem is by then we will be looking at rainfall totals across those areas well above 1 feet if not close to 2 feet!!! Please use extra caution when driving as only 2 feet of water can pick up your car! 6 inches of fast moving water can knock you off your feet! Thankfully the severe weather threat has been minimal with this storm, even though with any landfalling tropical cyclones there is still a threat even if it's minimal... To date there have been 8 tornadoes clustered around the Jacksonville, Fl metroplex...

With the tropics I'm going to wait until something develops before I start to do an in-depth analysis... Until we get a low level center to form it's extremely difficult to make any assumptions/forecasts... I will say that the two main threats 95L (northern disturbance) and 94L (southern disturbance) are developing in area that historically are not big time landfalling threats for the US... 95L looks to develop too far north and head out to sea, where 94L looks to develops too far south and head into the Yucatan/Central America... At this point it's impossible to say for sure what will happen, but either way it will be very interesting to see what happens!!!

Models all over the place...

The European is still showing a tropical cyclone near Hispaniola next Thursday night... Interestingly enough the Euro is showing very little movement in days 4-7 with this system as it just barely drifts westward...


The Canadian is showing a healthy tropical cyclone near the western half of Cuba next Thursday morning... It's not only much more progressive than the European, it also takes the system on a much more south and west track...


The GFDL is much more in line with the Canadian, also showing a healthy tropical cyclone south of Cuba and west of Jamaica next Wednesday afternoon... The GFDL gets the system up to 107knots as is scrapes the northern coast of Jamaica...


The HRWF shows a tropical cyclone slamming into Hispaniola and basically being destroyed by the 10,000 foot mountains next Wednesday afternoon... The HRWF did have the system near the Lesser Antilles at 56 knots before it's death into Hispaniola...


The GFS is not showing anything for next Friday morning... This is actually a little weird to me since the GFDL is showing such a strong tropical cyclone... Remember the GFDL is initialized off GFS model data so again I find it a little weird that nothing is showing up! I'm sure we will start to see something soon from the GFS!


The moral to this story is the models are all over the place right now... Of course this makes sense as we don't even have a named system to follow yet... I'm sure once something does form the models will slowly start to come together... I just wanted to show you what some of the models were doing with this possible soon to be storm... It's always good to follow the models so you can keep up with trends, errors/bias, and of course which model had the best handle from day 1... Time will tell which one is going to be right but I feel very confident that if anything does develop in the Caribbean, we will have a landfalling tropical cyclone of our hands near the end of Labor Day weekend... Teleconnections tell us we have a landfalling threat to the US and the MJO tells us we have a good chance for development in the Atlantic... Pardon the pun, but the tropics are beginning to heat up!!!

Teleconnection Time!!!

It's one thing to forecast a few days ahead of time and in the case of Fay basically now casting a storm, but it's a whole different ball game to forecast 10 days out... Some people think this is impossible but I beg to differ... Doug Gillham is the best long range forecaster I have ever known... Joe Bastardi is the best long range forecaster I have followed on the internet... Both of these men have an uncanny ability to forecast long range events... They take into account common bias/patterns they have seen over and over to make a long range forecast... Think of a rope... If I tug on one side of the rope it will eventually affect the other side of the rope... Teleconnections work the same way... Weather on one side of the globe will eventually affect the other side of the globe... The atmosphere is a fluid so eventually everything will come full circle...

Japan is a GREAT example of this... A trough/ridge patten in Asia will correlate to a similar pattern in the US 6-10 days latter... 6 days off the west coast of the US and 10 days off the east coast of the US... Tokyo, Japan is correlated with Cape Hatteras, NC and the south east China coast is correlated with the Gulf of Mexico region... I'm going to show you some interesting patterns that could affect the South East US coast in 9-10 days...

Here is yesterdays Japanese model 12z 500mb forecast... You see a trough in Japan and a ridge to its south and across China... So for the US you would expect a trough in the north east extending down into the midatlantic... You would also expect a ridge across the deep south and Florida... This would correlate to 9-10 days away since were forecasting for the South East US at about the August 29th/30th timeframe...

Here is Japanese model 12z 500mb forecast for today.... It's showing a trough exiting the island of Japan and another trough building in from the west... It also shows a ridge building in more to the east, and notice you have a landfalling typhoon in China... This is very important to notice... Especially the almost due west motion from the day before into land... Of course just because we have a typhoon in China doesn't mean at all we will have a hurricane heading towards the US. However if we did have a hurricane heading towards the US coast we can use the ideas from Asia to get a good idea where the US hurricane might go... Again this is just pattern recognition not hurricane formation prediction... I can't predict if a hurricane is going to form looking at this but I can forecast the eventual path looking at this... That's really important to understand!!! Forecasting for the US south east coast, this would line up with the August 30th/31st timeframe...

Here is the Japanese model 12z 500mb forecast for tomorrow... The second trough is heading towards Japan and the ridge is still strong to the south.... Again forecasting for the south east US is would line up with the August 31st/September 1st timeframe...

Here is the Japanese model for 12z 500mb on Sunday the 24th of August... You see a trough heading into Japan and you really see the ridge building back in strong to the south of Japan and into China... This would match up for the SE US on September 2nd/3rd...

Ok now that we have that lets look at a European 0z 500mb forecast for August 28th... Why the european??? I really believe it's far superior to the GFS for long range forecasting... You can see the euro picking up on a tropical cyclone heading towards the east coast of Cuba...

The Canadian 0z 500mb chart for August 27th also shows a tropical cyclone... The Canandian's track is a little further north of the euro's track, taking the tropical cyclone towards the Bahamas...

So what's the bottom line??? Ok both the European and the Canadian show a tropical cyclone heading towards the US... There tracks are not exactly dead on, but it's fairly close for that far out... Also looking at the eastern atlantic I believe these solutions are very possible as there is a lot of convection/rising motion out there... Knowing what we do with the teleconnections, I feel strong in saying we have a good chance at a landfalling hurricane in about 9/10 days.... We know there is a strong ridge south of Japan and we also know that we have a landfalling typhoon in China that headed basically due west because of that ridge. If you you put everything together like a puzzle, I feel strong in saying that if there is any tropical cyclones out in the atlantic it will keep heading towards the US... I don't see ANY reason why any tropical systems heading towards the US during the late August/early September timeframe will curve out to sea...

It will be very interesting to see if the GFS has it's traditional bias of curving the storm too far to the right... If the Euro's postion is correct we could have a storm moving towards south Florida and into the Gulf of Mexico... If the Candian's position is correct we could have a storm moving towards the south east US coast... Either one is possible but the bottom line is we have a big threat for a landfalling hurricane about 9/10 days from now... Time will tell but I think this is going to be fairly close to what happens!!!

Here comes the next one...

The european is showing the next possible system heading near the Caribbean islands in 7 days..  If the Euro is right, it looks to be fairly healthy/strong...  The storm would be named Gustav...  We have begun to enter an upswing in tropical activity that will probably continue for close to a month... We are experiencing a positive phase of MJO activity which is just basically an area of rising motions of air which enhance tropical activity...  The negative phase would hurt tropical activity because of sinking motions of air...  In any given year there are periods of enhanced/suppressed activity within the season...  There is evidence that the MJO enhances this activity (particularly for the strongest storms) by providing a large-scale environment that is favorable/unfavorable for development... The strongest tropical cyclones tend to develop when the MJO favors enhanced precipitation.  You can see the favorable rising motions off the eastern seaboard, the west coast of Africa, and nearing the Gulf of Mexico... 

On a crazy/funny/sickening note, look what the European is doing with Fay...  That's not going to happen, but still...  

WHY FAY, WHY???

You know I started to type up a recap and I started to realize why?  Fay has kicked my butt up and down so bad that at this point I'm going to be a like a coach that throws the game tape away after getting destroyed by 4 + TD's...  I don't think I have EVER been so frustrated forecasting...  The biggest problem with this storm is if you were off by 20-30 miles you were off by hundreds of miles because of the shape of Florida's coast... The biggest thing I have learned from Fay is always expect the unexpected....  Whether it's jumping across Cuba and reforming to the NNE, or strengthening across the peninsula of Florida, or breaking all the known bias/rules of tropical forecasting, never ever think you have a handle on something as complex as a tropical system...  Who knows, maybe Fay has a few more tricks up her sleeves, but at this point I'm done with her...  The tape is in the trash and I'm moving on to other things...  Man I hate this storm!!!

Fay keeps doing the impossible...

Fay is still 986mb with 65mph sustained winds... This is simply amazing!!! I mean I can't believe what I'm looking at... It's one thing with Andrew and Katrina to go across South Florida and keep their strength, but it's a whole different ball game for a storm to intensify over south-central Florida moving NW across the state... I'm glad to see that the NHC has finally changed their intensity forecast to a Cat-1 at landfall... I'm still further north than them but again I'm glad they increased the intensity forecast... I still think Fay keeps moving a little east and south of the NHC's current track popping out around or just south of Melbourne, FL... Once it does exit the coast it should start to increase a decent amount even if the NHC's track forecast is dead on... I will say my good friend Josh Johnson pointed out to me that water temps of the coast of North Florida and Georgia are not near as warm as I thought they would be.... They are hovering around 79/80 degrees... You have to go out about 75-100 miles to get into the mid 80's... So maybe this will keep Fay down some but after watching her increase and form an eye/eye wall over land, I'm not going to say anything is impossible with this storm... I'm still leaning with Bastardi on this one... WHAT A CRAZY STORM!!!

Fay Strengthening over land!!!

Tropical Storm Fay is definitely strengthening over land! The pressure is down to 986mb... Here is the pressure over the last 12 hours:

11pm: 995mb
2am: 994mb
5am: 989mb (landfall near Cape Romano, south of Naples, FL)
8am: 988mb
11am: 986mb

This is bad news... The fact that Fay has strengthen or land instead of weakened should be a warning that once Fay hits the warm waters of the Atlantic later tonight I really see Fay starting to explode... I'm still sticking with a landfall near the Georgia/South Carolina border as a Cat-2... Joe Bastardi from accuweather is calling for a sub 965mb storm.... That would be close to a Cat-3... He has had BY FAR the best handle on this storm since day one so I'm not going to doubt him at all!!!


The NHC has Fay making landfall near Jacksonville, FL... I don't agree with such a hard left turn! Plus since Fay has been making a V-Line towards the SW coast of Florida they have been too far left point after point... I feel strong in saying that Fay will pop out further south and east than the NHC has at this current time... That will make a huge difference in the intensity as well... The NHC has Fay as a 45 knots tropical storm at landfall... That's only 52mph when it's 60mph over land??? Again I just don't think that is going to happen... With more time over the water, I feel strong that Fay will at least makes it to Hurricane strength! Most likely I'll be leaving tomorrow morning for the Savannah, GA area...