"Eye" Of Debby Makes Landfall On Florida Coast

About an hour ago, near Horseshoe Beach.

Dwight replied:

Hmmm. The link appears to show that Debby went (or is traveling) across north Florida and is proceeding up the east coast of Georgia and the Carolinas. Is that correct? If so, it sure didn’t track with the forecasts of it stalling and then going into western Florida or Alabama.

Thanks again for all you continual updates. Tremendously appreciated.

I replied:

Hi Dwight:

Debby was a weird system, in that the center of circulation at the surface was often nowhere near the most-active thunderstorms. Right now, the Intellicast animation shows Debby’s big thunderstorms off the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. The center of circulation at the surface, however - what the National Hurricane Center would call the “eye” - is only now crossing the western Florida beach, in the Big Bend area north of Tampa. The “eye” is barely-visible in the Intellicast animation, and shows up as a ghostly white spinning ring.

Glad to be of help! Hope you dry off soon.

What you received was pretty-much a worst-case Tropical Storm impact. I think the weather people did a bit of a disservice to Floridians by not issuing more-forceful warnings much earlier, and if people grouse, they have a right. The very first indications of potential trouble started showing up in the NOGAPS forecasts on June 9th or 10th (I hesitated E-Mailing you at first, because I worried about giving you false alarms), but even as late as Thursday morning June 21st, influential folks like Al Roker seemed only mildly concerned about potential trouble.

In defense of the weather people, Debby was the sneakiest chameleon of a storm I’ve ever seen, the way it moved so slowly and dodged left and right, and it lulled people into complacency. Even today, it’s still moving slowly – almost glacial, by tropical storm standards.

May we see no more threatening systems this season!

Sunday, Tampa received 7.11 inches of rain, breaking the old record of 5.29 inches set in 1995. So far, Tampa has received a total of 10.74 inches since June 20th.