The two maps below show the tremendous difference a tropical system can make in dampening the effects of a drought. The map at left shows drought conditions in Georgia as of Tuesday, August 19th, when almost ten percent of the state was in exceptional drought conditions and only two percent was drought free. The right hand map shows conditions as of Tuesday morning the 26th at 7 AM. Now, none of the state is in exceptional drought, and 16% is drought free.

Remember, the cutoff for the drought maps was 7 AM Tuesday, which was before a good bit of the rain hit North Georgia, so I expect to see continued improvement with next week’s drought monitor as well. Lake Lanier has also risen just over two feet from the rainfall brought on by Fay.

The weather service has investigated the severe weather brought about by Fay, and has issued a report saying that there were six tornadoes in Georgia brought on by the storm. Most of the damage was in Hall and Jackson counties. Three EF1 tornadoes with 90 MPH winds were verified in Hall, where trees were knocked down and damage was reported to an elementary school.

Another tornado with 100 MPH winds touched down near Commerce in Jackson County, while two additional EF0 tornadoes with 70 MPH winds were reported in Monroe and Wilkes counties.

We may have some more opportunities for drought relief in the next week to 10 days. Gustav was a hurricane, and then was downgraded to a tropical storm when it made landfall in Haiti. It has moved a bit south, and is expected to increase in intensity to at least a category 3 hurricane. The media is comparing Gustav to Katrina, which hit New Orleans three years ago today. Despite the timing coincidence and the likelihood that Gustav will become an intense hurricane before it makes landfall sometime on Monday, it’s still too early to know exactly where the storm will make landfall. Recent updates to the forecast track have moved landfall west of New Orleans, and the further west it is, the less likely it will have any effect on the Atlanta area. A track further east, as some models are suggesting would make the storm more like Ivan in 2004, which brought intense rainfall to North Georgia.

And if Gustav isn’t enough, the Hurricane Center is now tracking Tropical Depression 8, located to the east of Puerto Rico. Later this afternoon, the storm will gain enough intensity to be named Hanna. Instead of moving south of Cuba as Fay and Gustav are doing, Hanna is likely to become a category 1 hurricane by Labor Day, moving north of the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas and heading west towards the Florida coast.

I suspect we’ll have a better idea of what both these storms will do as the weekend unfolds.

It looks like the worst of Fay has finally left north Georgia, although some counties to the east of Atlanta are having tornado warnings, the tornado watch was just extended until 2 AM Wednesday for much of northeast Georgia and South Carolina, and a flash flood watch remains in effect until 8 PM. We may get a few more showers overnight, but there are bits of blue skies showing. Fay is becoming extratropical, and will move northeast to bother the mid Atlantic states for the next day or so.

Let’s take a look at some of what Fay has done. First of all, Lake Lanier has risen about six inches as of noontime today from where it was early Monday morning. Much of the Lake Lanier watershed received some good rainfall over the past day or two, including Gainesville, with 2.64 inches so far today and .73 inches yesterday and Helen with 4.01 inches over the past two days. I expect Lanier to continue to rise over the next few days as much of the runoff from the storm continues to flow into the lake.

With 2.07 inches of rain today and .99 inches on Monday evening and Tuesday, I’ve recorded 48 hour precipitation of 3.06 inches at my weather station. Today’s rain here is the most in one calendar day since November 15, 2006, when 2.19 inches of rain fell, and as best as I can tell is the most 2 day precipitation since Tropical Storm Cindy came through on July 6-7, 2005, leaving 4.62 inches of rainfall.

My station, which is obviously not official, is on the low end of the rainfall scale. Some other two day rainfall totals include Alpharetta with 5.39 inches, Atlanta Hartsfield with 3.09 inches, Cleveland with 5.14 inches, Cumming with 4.52 inches and Cedartown, with 2.87 inches. It looks like Thomasville, Georgia is going to have the most rainfall from Fay–even beating anywhere in Florida–with a whopping 27.5 inches total precipitation through 2 PM today.

So does this mean the drought is over? Not exactly. For many areas, the rains from Fay only brought the rainfall total up to normal for August, given the extremely dry first few weeks of the month. And, Lake Lanier is well below where it should be, even this late in the summer. The good news/bad news is that after Fay, we now have to pay attention to Gustav, which is likely to turn into a much more powerful storm, and two more tropical waves which are likely to turn into storms prior to Labor Day.

Gustav is predicted to be a category 3 hurricane by Sunday afternoon, located a few hundred miles south of New Orleans. Right now, he’s made landfall in Haiti, and will be moving west south of Cuba, emerging into the Gulf by Saturday afternoon. Meanwhile, the Hurricane center is looking seriously at another low pressure system to the west of the Windward Islands that is expected to develop into a storm, and yet another one off the coast of Africa that has the potential to develop.

These storms are jockeying for position around high pressure located over the Florida peninsula. While it’s too early to tell for sure, chances are that Gustav will hit somewhere on the Gulf coast, and could affect the Atlanta area by this time next week. The wave off the Windward islands, assuming it develops, would more likely be slamming the Atlantic coast somewhere north of Georgia, and wouldn’t have an effect here.

In the short term, all the moist tropical air brought into the area by Fay isn’t going to go anywhere too soon. With the lack of a front to chase the humid air away, we’ve got a chance of thunderstorms through Labor Day weekend. At least you won’t have to worry about watering your landscape, at least for a little while.

Update 10:30 PM: Lake Lanier is now reporting 1054.56 inches – more than a foot above where it was yesterday morning.

Rain from Fay finally reached north Georgia yesterday, and it looks like she’ll be sticking around through Wednesday or Thursday. She has begun to move to the northeast, and forecasters have adjusted her track further to the east, bringing the storm over Birmingham and finally exiting Alabama north of Huntsville.

Storm rainfall reports through early this morning show Thomasville (west of Valdosta) with 17.43 inches of rain, and Moultrie with 6.2 inches. Closer to home, Atlanta recorded .37 inches of rain between 8AM yesterday and 8 AM today. Gainesville had 1.63 inches and Marietta had .99 inches. Here in Lawrenceville, I’ve had .85 inches–more than twice the amount of rain that had fallen so far in August.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the radar, and it appears that the storm is moving very slowly. There’s been a storm over extreme Northeast Georgia all morning, and the weather service has issued a flash flood warning for Habersham and Rabun counties. Most of the rest of the rain is still over in Alabama, and the southern part of that state is seeing some tornadoes. Along the Georgia coast, the weather is much better, and it appears they’re golfing on Jekyll Island again.

By the time Fay finally makes here exit late this week, it will be time to start worrying about Gustav, the next storm in the tropical Atlantic. The tropical wave that is likely to become Gustav has been following a path that is remarkably similar to that of Fay, with the center of the wave located south of the Dominican Republic. The Hurricane Center issued a Tropical Disturbance Statement, which is a good indication that the wave will become a named storm later today.

Update: At 11 AM, the National Hurricane Center named the storm a tropical depression, and by 2 PM, it was upgraded to a tropical storm named Gustav.

As she continued to move over land, Fay was downgraded to a tropical depression last night, and the Hurricane Center issued its last advisory for the storm. Her center was located 70 miles southeast of Jackson, Mississippi late this morning, and her remnants will drift towards the Mississippi Valley before starting to turn northeast later this week. By Thursday evening, the center of the remnant low is expected to be near the Alabama/Tennessee/Mississippi border.

Since crossing into the Florida peninsula late Monday, Fay has dumped a lot of rain in Florida and along the Gulf coast. Here are some rainfall totals from the storm as of 8 this morning:

Melbourne Beach, Florida – 25.28 inches
Cape Canaveral, Florida – 22.83 inches
Tallahassee, Florida – 19.17 inches
Jacksonville, Florida – 11.58 inches
Valdosta, Georgia – 8.54 inches
Albany, Georgia – 4.92 inches
Savannah, Georgia – 3.16 inches
Columbus, Georgia – 3.15 inches
Brunswick, Georgia – 2.89 inches
Dothan, Alabama – 4.17 inches
Montgomery, Alabama – 3.81 inches
Jackson, Mississippi – 3.92 inches
Beaufort, South Carolina – 5.34 inches

Now, the big question is how much more rain Fay will bring to the southeast before she finally disappears. To the right is the five day total rainfall forecast from Sunday morning through Friday morning. With the expectation that Fay will move northeast beginning tomorrow and that low pressure systems typically eject most of the rain to the right of the storm’s center, there still remains a reasonable chance for north Georgia and Alabama to receive some drought relief before it’s all over.

Eight to nine inches of rainfall in Lake Lanier’s drainage basin would be such a bad thing, It’s all going to depend on when, where and if Fay stalls out.

Tropical storm Fay continues to thrash around the Florida coast near Daytona Beach, and if the area was in a drought before, it certainly isn’t in one now. Total rainfall of up to 30 inches has been reported in some areas, with one observer in Brevard Country reporting 11.21 inches of rain in 24 hours ending this morning. Of course, rain amounts can vary widely over a local area. Here are some rain reports from NWS stations around Florida:

There have been reports of widespread flooding in Florida including 30 inch high water reaching up to front porches and car doors. The rising water has brought a variety of sea creatures on the runway at the Melbourne airport according to WSB radio, and the AP is reporting residents finding alligators swimming around neighborhoods looking for dry land.

Fay will begin to turn west overnight, but her center is forecast to remain in Florida and eventually on to Alabama and Mississippi as a remnant low. This won’t leave Georgia completely high and dry though. The southern part of the state will definitely see some rain from Fay, and the HPC is thinking that much of the northern part of the state could see as much as two inches on Monday and Tuesday as the high pressure system that has kept Fay so far south begins to move east, allowing Fay to recurve. There’s also a chance that we’ll see some rain over the weekend, but nothing like what we would have had if Fay’s original forecast track had been maintained.

The latest drought outlook came out today, and all of the areas in the southeast are forecast to see improvement over the next few months. Part of this may have been based on the failed forecast for fickle Fay–how’s that for alliteration–but part is also based on an above normal forecast for rain in the southeast for the 6-10 and 10-14 day outlooks as well as September. Temperatures could be above or below normal in September.

Taking a longer range view, the Farmer’s Almanac is due to be published next week, and a news story reports the Almanac is calling for a colder than normal winter for much of the country, and above normal precipitation in the southeast in January and February.

You can choose to believe the Almanac’s forecast or not, but realistically this winter is going to be ENSO Neutral. That means that we won’t have either La Nina or El Nino conditions; sea surface temperatures in the Pacific are forecast to be normal. In neutral conditions, weather tends to vary widely, neither favoring the warm, dry conditions of La Nina or the cold, wet conditions of El Nino.

Finally, I had a chance to listen to Gwinnett congressman John Linder speak at the Chamber’s monthly lunch. Linder’s talk was brief, but he brought up the dangers of believing the human-caused global warming theory, and the costs to American society the proposed remedies would impose. He managed to tie lack of progress in becoming self sufficient in production of energy and making sure we have enough water to drink to the agenda of the environmentalists who believe that humans have caused, and can cure global warming.

Fay continues to strengthen as she moves towards the Florida coast. At 7 PM, she was located 45 miles south-southwest of Melbourne. In their major 5 PM update, the National Hurricane Center didn’t make any major adjustments to the official forecast track, which is predicting Fay will move out into the Atlantic and then make landfall (again) as a hurricane south of Jacksonville, then follow a path along the Georgia-Florida border, and into Alabama. A hurricane watch has been issued from Flagler Beach, Florida north to Brunswick, Georgia.

While the Hurricane Center still thinks that strong upper level high pressure to the north will keep Fay from having much effect on the Atlanta area, Accuweather still predicts that the path will track further north. That’s in line with a few models, including the GFDL, which takes Fay on a path from Brunswick to Chattanooga. Here’s a map of what the GFDL thinks precipitation will be for the six hour period from Saturday at 2 PM:

The white dot represents the approximate location of Gwinnett County. If this model is right, we could have between 3 and 4 inches of rain in that six hour stretch, and of course that doesn’t include what would fall before and after. That would top the 24 hour rainfall of 4.57 inches I recorded back on September 16, 2004 when Hurricane Ivan passed to our west.

Whether the GFDL or another model has correctly pictured the upcoming weather, we’re probably not going to get a better idea until tomorrow night or Thursday, when Fay starts to curve back west. I talked to a friend living in Sarasota, Florida today. She said that although school was cancelled due to the possibility of Fay coming through, she didn’t get any rain at all.

At 2 PM, Tropical Storm Fay was located near Lakeport, Florida, about 25 miles southwest of Lake Okeechobee. The storm made landfall near Cape Romano, 55 miles south of Fort Myers around 5 this morning, and has been moving northeast across the Sunshine state. She is expected to move back out into the Atlantic sometime overnight. Here’s a satellite image of Fay taken at 10:15 this morning, with a distinctive eye feature:

The interesting thing is that contrary to forecasters’ predictions, Fay is gaining in strength and intensity as she moves across land. Estimated winds have increased from 60 to 65 MPH, and minimum pressure has dropped from 29.21 inches to 29.12 inches of mercury. These two indicators, plus the presence of an eyewall show there might be more to Fay than was originally thought, and that despite the morning forecast track taking her along the Georgia-Florida border into Alabama, there might be enough strength to keep her out to sea longer, and make an approach closer to the Atlanta area.

We’ll have to see what happens to the intensity of the storm as it continues to move north, and if the predicted path changes again at the next update, due around 5 PM.

Forecasters are having a difficult time predicting the ultimate path and speed of Fay, with the forecast track changing with each six hour update. Sunday at this time, the storm was expected to track through southeast Georgia, exiting into South Carolina near Augusta, and ending up Friday evening near the Kentucky/Virgina/West Virginia border. By this morning, the storm was going to travel roughly the same path, but end up near Asheville, NC. Midday today, the storm was going to move further east into South Carolina. And today’s late afternoon forecast has it as a tropical depression over Brunswick by Thursday afternoon, over Statesboro by Friday afternoon, and close to Atlanta by Saturday afternoon.

You can watch an animation of the 5 day forecast maps here.

Forecasters have slowed Fay down and moved it more towards the heart of Georgia primarily because of developing upper level high pressure to the north that will slow the tropical system down and ultimately push her to the west. That puts is in the scenario outlined by the Peachtree City weather office I mentioned in last night’s post.

The meteorologist who prepared this afternoon’s Peachtree City forecast admitted he was following the Hurricane Center’s guidance on Fay’s path, primarily because the models continue to offer different possible outcomes to the storm. Since the latest update from the Hurricane Center was released after his forecast was, there still isn’t much mention of possible rain. We’ll have to see what tomorrow’s forecast brings.

Over the weekend, Tropical Storm Fay has made her way across the Dominican Republic and Western Cuba, and is expected to turn north and cross the island overnight. Because of the proximity of Cuba to the storm’s path, she hasn’t been able to intensify very much. I’ve been watching the models and the National Hurricane Center’s estimates of Fay’s path, which earlier in the weekend took the path further east, but now seem to be bringing Fay west again.

This morning’s official track had Fay moving through southeast Georgia and exiting into South Carolina near Savannah. If that is the path she ultimately takes, there won’t be that much of an effect on the Atlanta area. However, this afternoon’s forecast track is a bit further west, with the storm crossing into South Carolina closer to Augusta. In addition, the storm is kept off the coast of Florida until it reaches the panhandle, allowing for development into a hurricane before making landfall. Here is a look at some of the latest modeling:

The white colored track is the official forecast, but as you can see, the models disagree on the forecast path once the storm crosses Cuba. For this reason, at this point confidence in the forecast path remains fairly low. However, this afternoon’s discussion from the weather forecast office in Peachtree City outlines what would be a good scenario as far as the north Georgia drought is concerned:

The real concern arises once the system moves into east GA/SC and what occurs thereafter. The 12Z run of the GFS has returned to the rather ominous theme advertised by yesterday’s 12Z run…namely to track Fay into SE/EC GA…then slowly retrograde the remnants westward across central and into W GA/E AL underneath the building mid-Atlantic upper ridge. The upper ridge is then forecast to build SW into GA…with the remnants of Fay being trapped over the CWA for 3-4 days [...]

This scenario would result in grave flooding concerns for much of the CWA…even more so than indicated yesterday. Any time a tropical system…albeit weak… remains stalled over an area for several days…the flooding threat is very real and serious.

Translating a bit of weatherspeak, the GFS is the main computer model used by the Weather Service to help make forecasts, and the CWA is the ‘county warning area’ that the weather office serves. 12Z is universal time for 8AM EDT. If this is indeed what happens, it will not only provide some short term relief for the lack of rainfall much of the area has seen this month, but it will also allow some recharging of groundwater, and improve stream flows, both major components of the hydrological drought conditions that have plagued the area for the last two years.

If all this does come to pass, it would start sometime on Wednesday and continue through the weekend. But, as I pointed out earlier there is still a lot of uncertainty to the forecast, although I think we’ll have a better picture of what will happen by this time tomorrow.

Tropical Storm Fay was officially named by the Hurricane Center this afternoon. She is located near the Dominican Republic, with winds of 40 MPH and moving west at 14 MPH. The official forecast track takes the storm across Cuba, and making landfall in Florida near Venice sometime Tuesday afternoon, and by Wednesday afternoon, the storm should be approaching South Georgia.

The forecast models for this storm have been steadily moving Fay’s track further and further to the west. Here are the latest models:

A lot can change over the next few days, especially if Fay doesn’t make landfall in the Florida peninsula. However, North Georgia could be feeling Fay’s effects sometime late next week.