Going nowhere fast (evening update 6 August 2024)

That’s basically what Debby – now a minimal tropical storm with no real core – is doing. It’s been sitting over Tybee Island GA most of the afternoon. Fortunately Debby pulled in a lot of dry air into the middle, so only light drizzle and spotty showers in much of the Savannah and Lowcountry the last few hours. Here are the current rain rates – all the heavy stuff is located in South Carolina and the Other Carolina …

The forecast is for the storm to start moving a bit faster tonight and pull away to the north, but “faster” is a relative term. It will be moving like traffic on I-95 before Christmas break, and will be Friday before it really clears the region. Here’s the latest NHC forecast track (Key Messages regarding Tropical Storm Debby (en Español: Mensajes Claves) ) with watches and warnings on top of the infrared satellite image – notice the darker gray core of the storm, gray meaning warmer, lower clouds. Match that with the precipitation rate map above, you can see the lower clouds are not dropping much rain and the colder, more convective cells are over Myrtle Beach arcing through Columbia …

For tonight and most of tomorrow, the rains will be heavy across South Carolina north of I-20 and into the midlands, as well across North Carolina and edging in to Virginia. For coastal GA and the Lowcountry (Beaufort and Hilton Head Island as well, both proud suburbs of Frogmore), the rain over night and tomorrow should mostly be fairly light, I doubt we will get more than another couple inches. Of course given how soggy things are, if there are any isolated downpours (which wouldn’t be surprising) expect some more flooding in the usual places if that happens.

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If I’m remembering this right I saw this movie in Israel with a group of US Embassy “economic attachés” …

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