Tropical Storm Emily: Quick as lightning
UPDATE 8/1 9 AM: The most impressive wind gust from Emily was on the other side of Florida Monday -- 65 mph at the C-MAN STATION FWYF1 FOWEY ROCKS (and can only be seen in the "Continuous WInd Data." This was during a thunderstorm, and was measured at 144 feet.
The runner-up was 55 mph from NDBC BUOY NPSF1 off the Tampa coast in the eyewall of the storm. The highest rainfall amounts are shown below (click on map to enlarge); heavy rainfall was scattered due to the weak nature of the storm and quick movement.
ORIGINAL BLOG ENTRY JULY 31, 2017:
Tropical Storm Emily sprung up this morning at 7:45 a.m. (having only been declared as a depression 90 minutes earlier) off the coast of Florida, then made landfall a few hours later.
While making landfall, the storm cranked out over 7,000 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes in the bands moving around her eyewall according to lightningmaps.org (enlarge), an unusual amount of lightning for a tropical storm (although hurricanes have even less).
The cold front that spawned Emily had another 18,000 strikes off to the east. Hundreds of those strikes were associated with a band of heavy rain that developed suddenly and hit the Sarasota area (as you can see from the radarscope image above). Broadcasting the Siesta Key Earthcam live on Facebook, you could see the frequent lightning, heavy rain and high winds of that one storm band coming in.
After it moved inland, a strong area of rotation formed on radar, causing a Tornado Warning to be issued for the Bradenton area. Only one storm report was filed -- 3-inch branches and power lines down, between South Venice and Englewood, Florida.
A little later, there was one point where there were several Special Marine Warnings, warning of waterspouts, and the Earthcam again showed extreme wind and rain as a band of storms approached Naples, Florida. As of 2 p.m., 10 inches of rain had fallen near landfall, according to the GREarth estimates, with as much as 4 inches in several areas of the state.
