Watches? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Watches!
# 2235
Coastal Watches/Warnings and 5-Day Track Forecast Cone
As of 5am, on this 16th day of August 2008, this is the anticipated 5-day track of what is forecast to become Hurricane Fay.
Tropical Storm or Hurricane watches won't be posted for Florida until Sunday at the earliest, but many Floridians are already taking notice.
For now, Fay is just a tropical storm, and she has several land masses to traverse before hitting the warm regenerative waters of the Florida Straits. Quite frankly, a lot can happen to this storm and its track over the next few days.
Those that haven't already will soon be buying up flashlights, radios, plywood, canned goods and sterno. There will be no mad scramble in this household, of course, as we stay prepared year-round.
All of this is subject to change, and the `forecast cone' is nearly 300 miles wide when the storm is forecast to reach my latitude, so it may very well miss my little abode by a considerable distance.
As luck would have it, on Monday my daughter (who's been camped out on my living room sofa for a week) will be moving into a new apartment in St. Petersburg. She has just moved down from Indiana, and at the age of 31, this will be her first tropical `experience'.
Fay, as you can see, is expected on Tuesday.
I'm loading her up with emergency LED lanterns, canned goods, and other supplies to go along with the crank operated short-wave radio I gave her last year.
The next couple of days, as you might imagine, will be a little busy around here.
While I still have hopes that this storm will trek further west, and miss the west coast of Florida completely, we here are long overdue for a hurricane. The good news is, that after coming across Cuba, Fay is unlikely to have enough time to generate into a really powerful storm.
If this website should temporarily cease having updates next week due to Hurricane related power or Internet problems, I'll try to get word to SophiaZoe.
For now, I'm not really expecting much of a storm. But of course, that could change.
