It was two weeks ago tomorrow, Tuesday, that AOC deployed to Barbados to start flying what was then called AL92, as indicated in an earlier posting. The disturbance wasn't doing much, and many on the flight crew were wondering why we were wasting our time flying it. Well, Mother Nature has ways of making something out of nothing, and in that regard, Fay was born. Last Sunday my posting indicated that Fay was moving into its "end game," but how sadly all of us were mistaken. Please note in my previous posting on Sunday that the experts forecast Fay to move straight north and be well into Georgia by Thursday last. Didn't happen, and at this writing it currently sits over northern Alabama as a Depression, continuing to drop copious quantities of ran over a the SE while also bringing some destructive tornados to the region. 
A better image may be the one to the left which was made just this past Friday around 6:00 pm as Fay slowly moved to the west across the northern part of Florida. Rainbands from Fay were still being felt as far south as Miami (over Mi Casa) and in Orlando at the homes of Sheila and Harry and Hilary and Brian. Sheila and Harry got around 8 inches of rain while Hilary and Brian got over 11 inches. It was a bit breezy at both homes, but they did not incur any damage.
As I mentioned, we continued to fly Fay after it moved north
of Cuba, executing two missions as it made landfall first at Key West and then just north of Naples. I was fortunate enough to be on the first flight which you can also vicariously ride along on courtesy of Google Earth. This is the track of the flight, which originated in Tampa and ended in New Orleans (we had to evacuate our base in Tampa), showing wind barbs (direction and speed) at our altitude of 12,000 ft. Notice that we came close to Cuba but did not overfly it. We had a clearance form the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs to do so, but the Cuban Air Traffic Control folks would not permit us to do so. I guess they have similar problems there - the right hand doesn't talk to the left.
We'll say goodbye to Fay anyway - neither feeble nor ferocious. Call her feisty and forever.
1 comment:
We said hello to Fay last night and today! Got around 3" of rain. The tornado sirens sounded this morning at 8am and the kids spent about 30 minutes in the hallways at school, doing "the drill". Nothing came of it (thank goodness).
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