Tuesday, August 19, 2008

This Doesn't Happen

Well, Tropical Storm Fay, dubbed "The Joker" by Jeff Masters on Weather Underground has done something that no one remembers ever happening before. After coming ashore this morning in Florida, Fay has strengthened and formed a well-defined eye. Yes, you read that correctly. Fay strengthened over land. It is now expected that Fay will go out over the Atlantic and possibly strengthen to Hurricane levels before coming ashore again.


This proves one main thing- forecasting hurricanes is even trickier than forecasting your normal everyday weather.

Here is the Weather Underground radar image from around 2:24 Eastern time today. There, clear as a bell is the eye.

Amazing.

(Sidenote: Yesterday afternoon we were watching the local evening news when the weather guy spent a good minute talking about TS Fay. My wife asked, "Why are we hearing about this? It isn't our weather?" I gave her the quick answer that well, lots of people from here go down there plus it's news. But perhaps the real reason is that weather guys and people like me get kicks from following the weather. Interesting weather is even more exciting. So, that is also why I am posting this here. Unless you are in Florida or Georgia, you can just read all this and go, "And so....?"

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