Now, I Wouldn’t Mind Seeing This
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.
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August 19th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
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August 20th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Gosh, I remain hopeful but I continue to see nothing that is going to end this drought. I run/jog a good bit and all I see are trees dying, bare branches, etc…everywhere! When are the full effects of drought felt by the trees? Isn’t it 3 years or so later? We won’t know until then how many will die. Why can’t we just get ONE week or 2 of wet, rainy weather. When I was growing up, I remember wet, rainy weather all the time! Where did it go? What makes this multi-year, multi-decade drought doubly bad is the Sun just won’t go away. We get UV index 11 day after day after day. We aren’t even getting cloudy days, to limit the stress on trees, wildlife, etc. Again, if you look back at 1998-2003 (lengthy Georgia/SouthEast drought) and now 2006-????…what are the long-term effects? Will Lanier ever fill up? It is going to take long, long periods of WELL ABOVE-AVERAGE precipitation to re-fill Lanier and get the water tables back up to norm. We can’t even get average precip! Georgia continues to receive BELOW-AVERAGE precipitation, with NOAA calling for far below average precip from OCT-MAY 2009 on their website. We aren’t even lucky enough to get a Tropical system (Fay) to roll up thru our parched State! Florida was dry, then gets 3-4 weeks of rain, then a nice tropical storm. Good Lord when are we gonna catch a break and get some RAIN???
August 20th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Morgan, I was hoping that Fay was going to contribute quite a bit towards ending the drought, but alas the GFS was right and the other models were wrong, and now it looks like we will see little, if any relief from the storm on north Georgia.
I think it’s going to be tropical weather that will ultimately end the drought. If we had gotten the 6-10 inches total precipitation that Fay might have brought, it would have allowed the groundwater to recharge quite a bit. Fortunately, we are still relatively early in the tropical season, and another storm may come to provide some relief.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Given the fact that the bulk of Fay’s rain is falling on south Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, does this mean that there will be fewer scheduled releases from Lake Lanier?
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Chris, while I don’t know the ‘official’ answer to your question, I’ll make a guess. The Corps of Engineers has been trying to use the lakes downstream from Lake Lanier to provide as much of the required flow into Apalachicola Bay whenever they can, and assuming that rainfall from Fay will help to fill up those lakes, they will probably continue to use them to meet the requirement.
Depending on the total rainfall from Fay (I hope to post some rain totals tomorrow), this will also help to recharge groundwater, and add to stream flows for the next few weeks, keeping lake levels high. The real question is how much of a recharge does West Point Lake, near Columbus, get. Alabama wants to maintain river flow to help its power plants. If most of the rain is further south. the Corps may have to draw from Lanier in order to provide enough water for Alabama.
BTW, the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center is now thinking we may get about four inches of rain from Fay in the Atlanta area over the next five days. Let’s hope that comes true.