Could someone put the tropics back to sleep...?

Happy Sky Watch Friday!! Here's my post!!! (Please visit Tom, Klaus, Sandy and Imac's SKY WATCH BLOG (click here or on the logo) to participate in Sky Watch Fridays. It really is so much fun and interesting to see skies all over the world!!! I highly recommend it!) My Skywatch Friday picture today is in honor of the extremely limited visibility I had this morning while I drove to work. The radiation fog was so thick that in some spots I couldn't see 50 yards in front of me. I certainly couldn't see the "sky".Now, I did not take this picture this morning... but it was taken on a foggy morning, such as today. There are a couple of elements of the shot that I especially love... 1. My anemometer (tool for measuring windspeed) is silhouetted in the sun radiating through the fog. 2. The dew (I'm a big fan of Dew, aren't you?) is evident on the tree in the shot. You cannot have fog without Dew. :O)

Fog is really cloud that forms near the ground, and like cloud, fog forms as a result of condensation. Probably the most common form of fog is radiation fog, so named because it is produced by radiational cooling of the ground. This happens at night, when heat absorbed by the Earth's surface during the day is radiated back into space. The highest degree of radiational cooling occurs on clear nights, when there are no clouds to reradiate the heat back to Earth.

Radiational cooling produces condensation in the air layers immediately above the ground. If only a thin layer of moist air is present, Dew will form; if a thicker layer is present, radiation fog (and dew) will form. [Such as on the day this shot was taken, back in January.]

It is often difficult to predict when dew and fog will occur together. It is possible to have dew without fog, but it is not possible to have fog without dew. The ideal conditions for dew are a still, clear night, high humidity in the air next to the ground, and low humidity in the air above. ~source

OK, enough about the sky, or the lack of sky in my case... onto the active tropical Atlantic. I have been talking a lot in recent days about Fay and Gustav... they are still there and doing their thing... we also now have Tropical Depression 8! TD 8 is hot on the heels of Gustav, but is a larger, currently better looking tropical system. Again, I don't want to in any way discard or detract from Gustav, most models build him into a very dangerous MAJOR hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico after this weekend, with sites set somewhere along the Gulf coast! Louisiana's governor has already declared a State of Emergency, which activates the assistance of the National Guard, no doubt motivated by the lingering memories of the devastation caused by category 3 land-falling Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. The currently barely under hurricane strength (having gained strength overnight), intensifying, most likely future Hurricane Gustav could have a similar course, and I am relieved to hear that they seem to have learned a lesson. Hopefully, it won't have to be tested in the same way, but let's hope everyone has and preparations along the Gulf are hard underway! Gustav is really pulling it together this morning, and with only Jamaica in the way... I expect him to be back at hurricane strength at the next advisory (if not sooner). He should be quite a force by the time he gets up into the Gulf. Currently, they are not forecasting any landfalls between now and then... which means, strengthen, strengthen, strengthen...Of course, there is still TD Fay wreaking havoc and dropping buckets of rain everywhere she goes. Fortunately, she is headed offshore soon and will leave us alone. There is talk that Tropical Storm Fay might have her name placed in the Hall of Retired Storms and we will never again see the name Fay. It's not common for tropical storms to have their names retired, but not unheard of... The last time a tropical storm name was retired was back in 2002 when they retired 2001's Tropical Storm Allison.

Hurricane Allison 1989, having replaced retired Hurricane Alicia, a hurricane that brought heavy damage to southeast Texas, coincidentally caused great damage in the same area. Even more unlikely is that though Hurricane Allison was not retired, another Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 again devastated southeast Texas, with its name retired in 2002 and replaced by Andrea for 2007.

And yes, we have Tropical Depression number 8. Don't get too comfortable with that designation though because I expect that TD 8 will be called Hanna by this afternoon. She is looking very well organized, is in a favorable environment, AND they expect the soon Tropical Storm Hanna will become a hurricane within 3 days.

THE HWRF AND GFDL MODELS ARE MORE AGGRESSIVE...PREDICTING AN INTENSE HURRICANE.

Florida... this looks like yours.

I won't even get into a discussion about the stuff coming off the coast of Africa right now... but... sheesh.

11AM UPDATE:

1100 AM AST THU AUG 28 2008

...HANNA BECOMES EIGHTH TROPICAL STORM OF THE SEASON...

Bingo! Oh, and Gustav's pressure dropped 5mb. You can expect a hurricane classification prior to the next advisory.

Have a lovely day!
~Dewdrop

Before we can even say goodbye TD Fay...

Looks like even while we are still dealing with tornado watches and warnings and flood watches and warnings and flash flood watches and warnings spawned by the movement of Tropical Depression Fay, we very likely might have another system, the potential Gustav entering the scene in the southeastern Caribbean. This system could get tropical designation at any time.

Aside from that, Mikey contacted me yesterday to inform me of a live tornado captured and streaming on CNN as it tore through downtown Denver yesterday afternoon, destroying million dollar residences. I was at Wally World, so I missed it all, but here is a link to the story. Thanks, Mikey for keeping me informed.

As for the impact that Tropical Storm Fay had in my area, I guess the best thing to do is give a chronological summary of the events that transpired in my neck of the woods... and share pics. Gtb took the pics of the blown out Taco Bell sign and the Old Times sign that was bent that are posted by Mike on the team blog. Again, thanks bunches, Mike.

So here we go... I guess we started to get far outer bands of light rain on Thursday night. Gtb and I sat in the driveway for a brief time, just enjoying the breeze of the wrap around bands in the light drizzle. It didn't amount to much, and it didn't end up getting bad at 2AM as forecasted. I already covered all that, but it's part of the story. So Friday, it rained all day, and it really started to get heavy as the day wore on... As I mentioned in the previous post, cells which had been tornado warned were headed my way by that afternoon. They closed the office early to allow people to get home before the worst of it moved in... At the house, my Disney World friends (you remember, the ones that asked me if they should break their daughter's heart) were just arriving when I did, on their return trip. They were able to mostly enjoy their vacation because the rain wasn't actually bad at Disney (they suspect that Disney World uses some sort of weather control device.) Of course, up here, we had brief power outages as land saturated with an abundance of rain started to drop trees on power lines. The power company did a fantastic job of managing the grids and maximing power to customers. I did, however, lose cable, internet and my land line... sigh. No radar. I relied on the wonderful members of the Southern Weather Brigade to keep me in the loop (ha ha, I'm so punny). Thanks guys and gal! You rock! Anyways, gtb's kids (and I later found out Mini-Dew, too, at the slumber party she was attending) were out playing in the wind and rain associated with TS Fay... ok, ok, so were gtb and I. We couldn't help ourselves.
I am glad to say that though we were experiencing super-saturation due to the quantity of rainfall (7.88"), it did not appear that flooding was an issue. I am grateful that the rain fell over a long period of time allowing the ground time to catch up. The trampoline net didn't fare so well... but it had already needed to be replaced...Unfortunately and terribly sadly, in Grady County, I did hear of a pre-teenage boy who drowned in the flood waters of a drainage ditch. Incredibly tragic. Rest assured, though, gtb's kids were on high ground and the water was not fast moving, nor was it above a couple of inches in any of the areas they were playing. Well, through the night, the wind howled and the rain poured down. Saturday is when things got interesting for me. I had just said farewell to my guests and was just finishing resetting the clocks from the brief outages the night before and was about to update my CoCoRaHS data since the internet was back up, when WOULDN'T YOU KNOW IT... the power went out. Unfortunately, this wasn't a flicker, it was out!! Then, I heard sirens, so I knew it was a nearby situation. Of course, I went out to investigate... in typical Dew fashion...Ugh! Just outside of my neighborhood, a tree was laying across a power line into the road. I asked the firefighter for an estimate on the power being returned. He said the one down the road took about 6 hours the previous night, so he estimated the same, and of course, you know me, I asked if I could get a little closer for pics. I stood by the mailbox. Didn't feel like getting electrocuted that morning. So, I gathered my things and headed to gtb's parents' house way on down the road, where they have power after being without all night, but not before driving around to see the area damage, to find more trees on wires, bent signs, blown out signs, a tarp covered roof of one of Mini-Dew's dear friend's house (the tree fell into her sister's room, everyone is OK!), limb debris everywhere... (wonderful gtb was sweet in letting me know about the bent sign in town.) Love the accompanying sign... "Come put mama's cooking to the test." lolIt was then that the tornado warnings started feeding in through the Olympics and text messages started rolling into my phone... Gtb's dad turned on the weather radio, and I made some calls. Rick had a tornado a mile from him. Meso Mike was taking cover with his girls in a store in Tifton when they were warned. Jay was giving constant updates. Alabama Mike gave gtb and I some guidance when we headed up to my house to check on things. Everything was terribly rainy, limited views... so we quickly headed back to his parents' house. Things settled down... I don't really like being a sitting duck... at all.

Sunday morning, the rain had subsided drastically as Fay had moved on well to our west, though isolated bands were still feeding through... incidentally, still this morning, tornado warnings were being issued in Alabama as a consequence of that persistent low still drudging its way through the southeast. On our way to church though, we came across this, which I had seen in the paper, but didn't realize where it was. The driver of this car had minor injuries, but was fine as the tree fell on his car while he was driving down the road. It just missed the drivers' side. Incredible.
Anyways... that's my Tropical Storm Fay story. I shot some video, but I haven't reviewed it yet. If it's anything worth posting, I will let you know. Stay tuned for the Tropical Storm Gustav story. Just kidding... maybe.

An anonymous reader asked if a tropical cyclone had ever made 4 landfalls in the same state before... I was stumped. Anyone know the answer to that?

11:00 Update: We have TD 7!

11:30 Update: tornado watch... I'm almost in that area...

2:00 Update: We have Tropical Storm Gustav! 60mph winds, pretty eye forming... My things happen fast around there.Have a great day,
~Dewdrop

Finally... Tropical Depression Fay moves on...

I'm OK. After a crazy weekend with drenching rain, power outages, a tree in a friend's and a tornado about 10 miles from my house, I am still here and doing fine. I will say that 7.62 inches of rain falls well within the estimated rain total of 6-8 inches that the Tally guys forecasted. Way to go,guys! Plus, it makes our ground so wet that trees just want to fall down.

I don't really have time to update fully, time to get ready for church, but the now Tropical Depression (finally) Fay certainly left her mark over my neck of the woods. For some updates from the team, check out the team blog (click here), as Alabama Mike posted an update when I was without power and internet (THANKS, Mike!) I will post a complete update later today or possibly tomorrow with video and pictures.

Just because she has been downgraded, doesn't mean she is done... she is still producing tornado warnings in AL... crazy storm.

Have a terrific Sunday!
~Dewdrop