Florida's Double Deluge, Part II: Tropical Storm Fay

摘要

It remains a troubling fact that the amount of rainfall produced by tropical cyclones that make landfall sometimes correlates poorly with storm intensity. That is, flooding rains are just as likely to occur in a tropical storm as in a Category 3 hurricane, if not more so. History speaks to some truly amazing rain events generated by weak tropical systems.Take Tropical Storm Allison (2001), which dropped 41 inches of rain over southeast Texas. Or the ghost of Hurricane Camille (1969), which was barely a tropical depression when it dumped 27 inches of rain in just 8 hours over central Virginia. So here we have Tropical Storm Fay, who's rain accumulation and track are shown in the figure. Fay seemed determined to precipitate on every single county in Florida. Her track zigzagged first up the peninsula, then along the panhandle, making five separate landfalls. A whopping 28 inches of rain-4 times the amount unleashed by Cristobal just the month before-inundated Melbourne. Fay's transit across the entire state, beginning with entry over the Keys and exiting from the far northwest tip, unfolded over six days.