I’m sitting here early Sunday morning listening to the light rain and gentle wind. It is all that we’ve seen of tropical depression Fay.
I watched the National Hurricane Center/Tropical Prediction Center (http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/) since last Wednesday when Fay first gave a hint it might hit the US Coast. It looked like it was going to be another Florida storm, if it made it to the coast at all, so it seemed safe to take a long weekend.
Already on my trip, I got a call late Friday from a cohort in Chattanooga about a business matter. He mentioned in passing it looked like they were going to get hit by Fay after it came inland.
That was the first news I’d heard and I wasn’t near an operating television, or the Internet until the following Monday. By then Fay was hanging around battering Florida trying to meander west.
A quick check of the satellite imagery suggested it might roll over into the Gulf. That got me a little concerned. The Gulf water is about 85°F right now and that is plenty hot enough of an engine to rev up a slow moving storm into a dangerous beast.
Adding to my lay interpretation was the NHC track predictions that showed it moving over the southern edge of the Florida panhandle with a chance to take the southerly route out over the Gulf.
That storm wandered around Florida the rest of the week, toying with its decision to move West - like an anxious teenager trying to call a girl he has a crush on but is too shy to take the plunge and dial the number. Finally after dumping ten’s of inches of rain it started its slow amble westward and last Friday the predictions still were uncertain enough to cause concern.
A steady gentle breeze had picked up in Gulfport. For someone who has been through a hurricane, that is always an ominous sign of an impeding storm.
Looking to the east and southeast, one could periodically see the high clouds that Fay spun off as it churned in the Panhandle. Saturday when I left Gulfport to drive to a home in Pearl River County we may work on, the sky was overcast. By now big, bad Fay had slowed to a 45 mph tropical storm and it was almost a 100% certainty she would burn out over Alabama and Mississippi as a bad rain storm.
In Pearl River, the Sun came out but on the way back on US 90 between I ran through several hard rain squalls on US 90 between Pearlington and Waveland. By the time I got to Gulfport, the breeze had picked up a little and it was overcast but still no rain. The NHC now predicted at best 40 mph winds and maybe 0.5 to a few inches of rain on the southern Mississippi coastline by Sunday.
Nevertheless, the village staff had panicked and everything in sight was moved into sheltered areas or tied down.
Some one had unlocked and barged into my trailer that I was moving from and closed my ceiling vent, even though I’d told everyone I’d be back by late afternoon (and this was not going to be the bad storm). No one was in sight. I guess they were huddled in their trailers. Still smarting from that invasion of my privacy, I closed a few flapping doors and moved most of he rest of my things into my new trailer.
One person, trying to be helpful, moved all my plants and two of my three Queens of the night that have several buds on them. They are really position- sensitive to the light, I hope the buds don't drop. I guess Katrina is still too close but its lessons aren't. My friends panicked this time rather than follow the remarkably accurate Hurricane Center prediction.
So, here I sit, early Sunday morning listening to the light rain and gentle wind. It is all that we are going to have of tropical depression Fay.
However, there is another tropical depression in the southeastern Caribbean I’ll watch closely.
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