Did I make a mistake or did I make the right decision?
It’s 2:30 in the morning (Central Time) and I’m watching the radar out of Key West that show’s Tropical Storm Fay moving into Marco Island Florida.
The reason I question if I made the right decision now is because the storm is looking much better on radar. But and that BUT is for you Ryan since you hate it when I say BUT, But this was not the case last night.
24 hour’s ago, NHC had forecasted TS Fay to be coming in as Hurricane Fay into the Tampa & St. Pete area of Florida. Here is the 2:00 AM forecast from NHC from last night.
As you can see in the forecast track above and the previous blogs, it looked like the storm was going to turn into a hurricane and hit Tampa in about 5 hours from now, BUT (just for you Ryan) that is not the case now as the Radar graphic above shows it making landfall just south of Naples Florida in the Marco Island area.
Just 24 hour’s ago, I was booking a flight to Tampa that would have left at ten in the morning and I would have been in Tampa by three in the afternoon to intercept what I thought was going to be Hurricane Fay.
So why did I bail on the trip at the last minute? Simple really, I just said a prayer and asked for a second opinion and not more then a few minutes later, Blake Michaleski, one of my friends and hurricane chase partners calls me up and said “Dude, have you seen the radar out of Cuba?”
I was watching it but thought it was looking a little strange with the movement at first but when he saw the same thing I saw, it confirmed my worst fear, the storm sped up an the track shifted east and Fay was now heading almost straight north. We talked about how the center of the storm looked as if it jumped out of the center of the cone from NHC that is posted above the radar image.
So this spooked me because I knew if the storm busted ass north, it would not have the time it needed to grow into a storm that was worth chasing with the cost of flying into the area at the last minute.
I watched Fay during the day and was on standby for now-casting for the stringers we do have in the area. Hell I was even ready to get on a late flight into Tampa this afternoon and still fly down if the forecast would have changed but it did not. TS Fay did not gain any strength and when it hit Key West Florida, it was still a 60 MPH Tropical Storm.
I was ready to go but Fay just did not look like a storm that was worth chasing on Radar unless you already lived there. Above in the radar image from around five in the afternoon, there was no real eye of the storm but a rag tag mess of a center of the storm.
Now Tropical Storm Fay is actually making landfall as I write this blog. I just talked to my other chase partner Chris Collura who is on Marco Island right now and he said there is a lot of rain and wind but with it being a night he can see some stuff but as he put it “It’s Dark, And I Can’t See Anything Worth Getting Video Of Yet”. The latest radar image as I type is this.
Now did I make a mistake by not going to intercept Tropical Storm Fay?
Nope, I think I made the right call. I have Brian covering this and Chris is covering it as and their both top guns at what they do. The storm is still not a hurricane with the latest report from Naples
| Naples Municipal | 03:53 | Light Rain Fog/Mist and Breezy | 76 | 76 | 100 | NE 22 G 32 | 29.49 |
Look’s like I chose wisely…