Monday, August 18, 2008

Fay Update (Hot Today)

After a morning low in the 50's again, we are looking for highs right around 88° here in the Cookeville, TN area.  If you're wondering about rainfall, we have now gone 10 days without any measurable rain.  Studying our forecast, there is only a very slight chance Wednesday-Friday.

*Latest, Local Forecast*

Tropical Storm Fay continues to churn and keep everyone guessing.  She is expected to pull away from Cuba today and head straight to the Florida Keys...her track is similar to that of Charley in '04....she is not, however, nearly as strong as Charley.  Check out the Nat'l Hurricane Center's website for more on Fay.

One of my faithful readers...Paul from the St. Petersburg area near Tampa, Florida provided me with some great links....here is his e-mail below.

Thought these might come in handy for you if you're following the storm.  I've found in the past that I had to switch back and forth between some of them because they can go down due to heavy traffic or power and Internet outages.

Television
Bay News 9 - local cable news station - www.baynews9.com
WFTS ABC affiliate - www.wfts.com
WTVT FOX affiliate - www.myfoxtampabay.com
WTSP CBS affiliate - http://www.tampabays10.com (one of my faves)
WFLA NBC affiliate - http://www.wfla.com (loads video and popups automatically, so I don't prefer this one)

Newspapers
St. Petersburg Times - www.sptimes.com/home.shtml or www.tampabay.com
Tampa Tribune - www.tampatrib.com or www.tbo.com

Emergency and Weather links
Pinellas County EOC (St. Pete, Clearwater) - http://www.pinellascounty.org/emergency  Has emergency links on left of page
Rocco's St. Pete weather (he's just up the road from me!) - http://home.tampabay.rr.com/rocco/weather.htm
Collier County EOC (Naples) - http://www.colliergov.net/index.aspx?page=101
Collier County Weather Station (handy!) - http://eoc.collierem.org/eocwx/wx.htm

And of course you know how to reach Weather Underground or the NWS radar (our station is Ruskin, FL)

Enjoy!  Hopefully things will stay quiet.  I do believe I will not be working Tuesday if I can help it.

Paul


Another e-mail from him this morning reports the following:


As expected, Fay lost a little strength overnight during its trek across the Cuban terrain; it's down from 50 knots to 45 knots.  But Cuba represented the last impediment to strengthening and now Fay has plenty of warm water to support it.  Next stop appears to be the Keys followed by the Port Charlotte vicinity of the Florida Peninsula.

Emergency operations centers in coastal counties are just now opening so there are no new statements or reports.  Sarasota County decided yesterday to begin ordering mandatory evacuations for mobile home residents, yet they did NOT cancel school classes for today.

Weather conditions in Pinellas; quite calm, actually.  We did not even get any rain yesterday, probably due to Fay drawing everything down into its vicinity.  The forecast today was for a 50/50 rain chance but we may not see anything until tonight.


Thanks Paul...I appreciate all of this information!!!

All of the Tropical Links on my blog have been moved up on the right near the top of the blog.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Clay/Michael- have you seen what the models are doing with Fay? I was just taking a quick look at the 12z...it looks like that have Fay doing dances. The Euro takes Fay to JAX around to TLH then to BHM and finally to CHA by next Monday. GFS takes 10 days but does something similar. This is gonna be fun to watch what Fay's end-game will be!

Michael Detwiler said...

Eddie:

I hope Fay heads up here toward Middle TN, as we can certainly use the precipitation!! The models are crazy for sure!

AMS

AMS
Member-American Meteorological Society