Fay Could Bring Needed Rainfall to Georgia
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.
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August 19th, 2008 at 12:10 am
[...] for Georgia. The Lawrenceville Weather Blog is following Fay, but take a look at the difference in this projected path and the most recent one. As the LWB says: Forecasters are having a difficult time predicting the [...]