2008 Atlantic hurricane season

[Lunican]

The storm track does not swerve around Jacksonville.

[David]

It's a joke dammit! Jesus!  I've never been on such a stiff message board before. It looks like it's beelining for us then says nope nope nope, that place sucks, not going there. If you look at the track, clearly the eye hits Nassua county, i mean that's exaclty where it's going to hit, the graph says so! So yeah, it's not going to hit Jacksonville at all. it completely swerves around. It's our "Hurricane shield" in full effect.

but either way, even if the path of this "storm" comes right over us, barring any freakish strengthening in the Atlantic, if it even pops out there. By the time it gets here it'll be mild wind and rain like they all have been in the past, therefore supporting my argument that not only can't Jacksonville get any first rate entertainment acts to come through here, we  can't even get first or second tier Hurricanes or tropical storms to pay us a visit. We always get the left overs. It's just not fair.....

[gatorback]

Not according to your local media.  They have Jax as in the middle of the path.  Check out firstcoastnews.com.

[David]

That's Tim Deagan hyping it up. I swear everytime we go through this he puts the path of the storm right over downtown. Ask JSO and St. Johns county PD, they have to field off frantic calls from worried citizens everytime our news leaders forecast a storm. I try to stick noaa.gov or a marine forecast. They're not doing it for the ratings.

Alright, let's start taking bets!

Bridge closures, how many JEA customers without powers, how many trees will be down.

I'm placing my odds on less than 5,000 customers without power.

[reednavy]

This is the mentallity here.

I will say this, and make it clear.

This city needs to be taught a lesson, a harsh one at that. Look at Houston from Allison in 2001, nuff said.

Every single person that thinks this city is safe needs to be slapped to the floor, I'm so sick of this thinking. Jax needs to learn, and it will take the hard way for it to be drilled into quite a few heads.

Hate me for saying that, but it is the only way, tough cookies.

[adamh0903]

I didn’t mean to turn this into a pissing contest about forecasting but the track is from your noaa.gov site...actually it’s from the Tropical Prediction Center.


As a forecaster you have to look at every option, and as I said earlier, some early model runs had Fay doing some strengthening before landfall. Now on the latest model runs, more models are in agreement on the current track, and the GFDL has Fay a minimal hurricane before landfall near our coast.

Can all this change? Sure it can, it can do whatever it wants to do, this isn’t an exact science, but what if it didn’t change, what if the GFDL is right, what if this thing does strengthen before landfall, and worse than that, what if Tim or whoever knew that was an option and never warned us...Assuming it would do as a lot of other storms has and turned away....

[David]

If I see a Katrina bearing down on Jax Beach, I doubt i'm going wind surfing. But a storm like this? It's nothing to get upset about.

I'm not saying we can't be hit, i'm saying statisticaly, we're safer than most of the state from taking a direct hit by a major hurricane. I don't think we're all complacent and not taking them seriously. Just give us one to take seriously and then see how people react. The last true test we had was Floyd back in 99.

[David]

Any chance I'll have to eat my own words over the next few days?



Fay did somehow manage to strengthen slightly while over land.

[adamh0903]

The GFDL has been showing to path for about 48 hours now, along with the CMC and GFS, (not shown on this graph) one thing interesting to note from the model run you posted is now the UKMET, which has been sort of an outlier for a few days, seems to be in better agreement with the rest of the models.

The core of Fay tightened up over land, which is probably what led to the initial pressure drop, but the increase in wind speed from the 11a adv to the 1p adv was incredible, there has always been arguments of whether or not storms can feed off of lake Okeechobee and the everglades, I guess it did in this case.

In Moore Haven, winds have been sustained at 56mph gusting to 76 from weather station reports there.

[thelakelander]

The land its crossed so far is actually the Everglades.  So I guess it could be assumed that swampland is just like open ocean water for storms.

[reednavy]

We're under a Hurricane Watch.

COASTAL WATERS FORECAST FOR NORTHEAST FLORIDA/SOUTHEAST GEORGIA
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE JACKSONVILLE FL
528 PM EDT TUE AUG 19 2008

ATLANTIC COASTAL WATERS FROM ALTAMAHA SOUND GA TO FLAGLER BEACH FL
OUT TO 60 NM

AMZ454-200500-
ST AUGUSTINE TO FLAGLER BEACH FL OUT 20 NM-
528 PM EDT TUE AUG 19 2008

...TORNADO WATCH 843 IN EFFECT UNTIL 1 AM EDT WEDNESDAY...
...HURRICANE WATCH IN EFFECT...

[David]

Any chance of rapid intensification? We’d be looking at approximately a cat 1 if this forecast holds steady, correct?

[adamh0903]

One of the afternoon runs of the GFDL model had the storm at Max Cat 1/Min Cat 2 level, but that was the only model forecasting that strength, so I would call that model an outlier for the time being, but nothing is out of question with this storm.

Most of the models seem to be in agreement with this general motion now, so I think we can figure this is going to be the general track with probably only slight adjustments from here on out.

[David]

I apologize if my comments earlier were overzealous and extremely opinionated. The truth is I was banking on the forecast being way off,  but only because I actually get my hopes that we'll get a tropical storm or minor hurricane just to put some energy in the atmosphere and witness this force of nature up close. I got so sick of the false alarms I started chasing them about 9 years ago as a very very amateur storm chaser.

People have their opinions about that but I really do enjoy experiencing this up close and in person. I do not wish however, that any damage or harm come to our city or citizens. That's part of the beauty of chasing a storm, you get to experience the intensity of it and  hopefully go home to calmer weather.  Charley was my scariest experience, Dennis was fairly calm for a cat 3,  Frances was 300 miles of whitewash and Jeanne definitely packed a pretty strong punch, all of which I was within 10-20 miles of the eyewall upon landfall, except for Dennis. I seriously hope Fay isn't' anything like those, because I wound up being stuck in South Florida on the last two I chased for over a day, couldn't find gas for nearly 100 miles and cell phone service was out for about a 50 mile radius around ground zero on Jeanne. Those were all strong cat 3's though. I'm hoping even if Fay becomes a 1 and is a direct hit, we'll have a quick recovery.

[gatorback]

no harm taken. Look man, mother nature is awesome.  Who doesn't want to watch it. I went sailing once as a storm went up the coast and to be honest was awe strucken to the point were I always tracked the storms after that. I was like 12 at the time.