Dear friends,

Looks like Tropical Storm Fay is doing something which tropical systems are not supposed to do: its strengthening *overland* .

Instead of behaving like any other tropical cyclone, Fay actually is strengthening and has succeeded in forming a well defined eye. The 5PM National Hurricane Center forecast is now predicting that Fay will become a hurricane and loop around Daytona Beach before making a second landfall in northeast Florida as a Cat1 hurricane.

This will directly impact the area where I live and we can expect power outages and disruptions in the cable networks.

I will try to keep blogging and answering emails the best I can, but I apologize in advance if Fay gets in the way :-)

Kind regards,

The Saker
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UPDATE1: Fay did not make it to hurricane so far, and the National Hurricane Center does not forecast any significant strengthening. We are getting A LOT of rain, but at least the wind gusts does not exceed tropical storm strength speeds and that means that we should keep power and the networks should work. So far so good :-)

UPDATE2: Fay does not have an eye,technically speaking, but here in New Smyrna it feels exactly like inside the eye of a system. Hardly any wind, spray-like drizzle and eerie calm. We even had just a little sunshine earlier in the day and its hard to believe that there are winds rotating around us. Check out the latest radar: (click on image for better view)

UPDATE3: Looks like Fay is finally leaving the Florida east coast after dumping an absolutely amazing amount of rain. Here, in New Smyrna Beach, we were truly lucky as we spent three full days in the exact center of the “eye” (technically, not really an eye, but a center of circulation) of Fay, so we got less wind (at times, even no wind at all) and much, much less rain that the folks just south of us in Brevard County. Fay is definitely the most bizarre tropical storm to hit Florida in recorded history.