Tropical Storm Debby – Day 3
Position: 29.2N 85.1W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: Northeast [040°] near 2 mph [ 4 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 45 mph [ 75 kph].
Wind Gusts: 60 mph [ 95 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 240 miles [390 km].
Minimum central pressure: 992 mb.
Currently about 35 miles [ 55 km] South of Apalachicola, Florida.
A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the coast of Florida from Mexico Beach to Englewood.
The 10AM CDT update moved the western limit of the Warning area to 5 miles East of me, which is good because I have other things to do.
The storm is still creeping along and it has entered the cooler water near the coast. It had already pulled a lot of dry air into its core and has been battered by moderate wind shear, so intensification is extremely unlikely. Meanwhile, it has been dumping swimming pools of rain on the peninsula and spawning tornadoes. Slow moving storms produce major flooding regardless of their status on the wind scale. Tropical storm force winds generate surge that will push water into bays and bayous that acts like a dam, preventing rain run-off from draining. There are a lot of people in Tampa and other areas of the peninsula looking for their flood insurance policies this morning.
At 10PM they moved the Warning area further east to Mexico Beach, Florida. Meanwhile, Apalachicola has been enduring tropical storm conditions for a full day and it isn’t going to get better anytime soon.
Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.
[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]
2 comments
“Slow moving storms produce major flooding regardless of their status on the wind scale.”
Right. T.S. Allison comes to mind… nothing spectacular in the wind department, but the flood from hell over the entire city of Houston. Within limits, give me wind over flood any day. (So what am I doing in Houston?)
Glad to read that Debby will apparently miss you. I had to look on the map to confirm my memory of where those towns were, but it looks like you should be OK.
We are seeing some surge, but that is only a problem for the fools who live right on the water. The wakes from the larger boats are pushing water onto the lawns, which will kill the grass, but the grass shouldn’t have been put there in the first place.
The last time a storm came ashore at Destin there wasn’t as much wind as a normal thunderstorm. The western side of tropical storms is never a problem. OTOH, when Katrina went into Mississippi, we knew it, even though we were 200 miles away. That’s why all of the bad effects are being seen on the peninsula. The east side of the storm is where the trouble is located. I stopped worrying when the wind shifted from the East to the Northeast.