Tropical Storm Fay has made its second landfall, at Cape Romano, just south of Naples. She never did reach hurricane strength.
Satellite at 4:45 AM EDT.
Radar at 5:23 AM EDT.
Officially, Fay made landfall with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph. The 5am EDT discussion says the storm “DID NOT STRENGTHEN MUCH…IF AT ALL…BEFORE COMING ASHORE.” I guess we can officially add Fay to the growing list of 2008 storms that never quite managed to get their act together and live up to their meteorological potential. That is becoming a pattern this year. Anyway, all Hurricane Warnings have been discontinued.
The latest forecast track calls for Fay to briefly re-emerge over water on Wednesday, though probably not long enough for significant re-strengthening. Then she’s expected to take a sharp left-hand turn.
The details could change, but the general concept of this forecast has grown more high-confidence in recent hours, as the discussion explains:
OVER THE PAST DAY OR SO A CONSENSUS HAS BEEN BUILDING ON FAY BEING TRAPPED BENEATH A MIGRATORY MID-LEVEL HIGH PRESSURE IN THE WESTERLIES…WITH EVEN THE GFDL BEGINNING TO BACK OFF ON A PROLONGED NORTHWARD MOTION. THE GUIDANCE IS IN SLIGHTLY BETTER AGREEMENT ON THIS SCENARIO AND THE OFFICIAL FORECAST NOW SHOWS A SLIGHTLY SHARPER SLOWDOWN AND TURN TO THE WEST…IN BEST AGREEMENT WITH THE ECMWF.
The variety of computer-model solutions can be seen here and here.
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