Disturbance may form close by as TS/Hurricane Debby around Monday
THURSDAY 6 P.M. UPDATE — With the threat of a storm and computer models showing Invest 97L may grow into a named storm and make landfall in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis has issued an executive order placing a number of Florida counties, including Osceola, under a a state of emergency. They make up about the northern 2/3 of the state, from the I-4 corridor north.
The declaration eases the ability to move state and federal assets into areas that may need assistance before, during and after the storm, and hasten response. The order directs Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie to coordinate the state’s approach to the storm and any recovery operations.
The counties under the declaration are a state of emergency (Central Florida counties in bold) are: Alachua, Baker, Bay, Bradford, Calhoun, Charlotte, Citrus, Clay, Collier, Columbia, Dixie, Duval, Escambia, Flagler, Franklin, Gadsden, Gilchrist, Gulf, Hamilton, Hernando, Hillsborough, Holmes, Jackson, Jefferson, Lafayette, Lake, Lee, Leon, Levy, Liberty, Madison, Manatee, Marion, Monroe, Nassau, Okaloosa, Orange, Osceola, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, Putnam, Santa Rosa, Sarasota, Seminole, St. Johns, Sumter, Suwannee, Taylor, Union, Volusia, Wakulla, Walton, and Washington
THURSDAY, 11 A.M. After a quiet month or so, Mother Nature’s put the ‘hurricane’ back in hurricane season, with a system we in Osceola County must watch over the next week or so as it forms over Hispanola and Cuba and potentially makes its way into the eastern Gulf of Mexico.
The National Hurricane Center has designated the system Invest 97L, an area being watched for development. The NHC has been monitoring it all week and gives it a 70% chance of forming into a depression or more over the next seven days. The next storm name is Debby.
While early projections on it forecast a path just east of Florida in the Atlantic — putting us mainlanders on the better ‘left side’ of it — computer models now coming in with added data are now increasingly the likelihood of it entering the eastern Gulf and affecting much of Florida by Sunday, into Monday.
The concern with that is the warm water temperatures, approaching 90 degrees near Tampa, could offer up rapid intensification.
That explains why the first intensity forecasts are showing the possibility of a Category 2 storm making landfall near the Big Bend or Florida Panhandle — the same folks who experienced Hurricane Idalia last year.
In fact, some of the earliest models being run are quite — wacky. For instance, a GFS (American model) run from early Thursday morning forecast the storm to become a Category 2, make landfall north and west of Cedar Key on Monday, cross northeast and enter the Atlantic Ocean near Savannah as a tropical storm or depression, spin offshore for two days before looping back southwest to hit Jacksonville as a Category 1 storm next Thursday or Friday.
The ECMWF (European) model is less bullish on intensity, instead keeping it a persistent low in the northeast Gulf for as many as three days, lashing us with rain.
Again, these are early models.
“Lots of challenging wrinkles with this one — keep an eye on the forecast for the next few days,” said Levi Cowan, the forecaster behind TropicalTidits.com said early Thursday afternoon.
So, what does it all mean?
Get ready for significant rain that could start late Sunday and last a good portion of next week. Also, dust off your storm preparations, with the chance that you may need your supplies of water, batteries and snacks — oh, the snacks! — come next week.
Check back at AroundOsceola.com for all the updates!
