Worst of Fay stays away; flood watch in effect

FORT WALTON BEACH - Orville Lee Maddan Jr. sat in a rocking chair on his front porch enjoying surprisingly good weather Sunday afternoon.

"I expected it to be a little more severe," he said as he headed to his lawnmower. "It was a non-event."

"It" was Tropical Storm Fay, which cleared out of Northwest Florida after yielding less than four inches of rain in Okaloosa County.

Okaloosa County, Santa Rosa County and Walton County are under a tornado watch expected to end at 3 p.m. Monday.

After surviving Tropical Storm Fay mostly unscathed, the Gulf Coast will see isolated tornadoes, heavy rain, coastal flooding and dangerous rip currents Monday, according to the National Weather Service.

"Fay was very uneventful, fortunately for us," said Dino Villani, Okaloosa County's director of public safety.

Why the calm instead of the storm?

"The center stayed over land. It really didn't get back near the water as much as we thought," said meteorologist Gary Beeler, of the National Weather Service in Mobile, Ala. "Also, it got a little bit of dry air coming in from the west that kept it from developing anymore."

"It went a little further inland, just a hair north of the track that we had forecasted," added weather service meteorologist Jeff Garmon.

The storm weakened to a tropical depression as it traveled inland Saturday, with maximum sustained winds of about 35 mph. Still, cities from Pensacola to storm-wary New Orleans prepared for possible flooding.

"People automatically assume that if it weakens, the hazards go down with it, but in the case of rainfall, it's not a function of wind speed," said Jamie Rhome of the National Hurricane Center. "Slow moving systems dump a lot of rainfall."

And the storm may not be gone yet.

According to the weather service, an axis of deeper moisture working out of the Gulf of Mexico could be the start of another band of rain that will hit the coast today. Light rain from the storm's outer band hit south Okaloosa County on Sunday night.

"We've been saying that the rain would be Sunday and Monday and we could see an axis of heavy rain still form. The potential is still there for it to form on the east side. We're on the east side of the circulation now," Garmon said. "These things go in cycles, especially dying, decaying tropical systems over inland areas."

As a tropical storm, Fay set a record with four landfalls in Florida and was blamed for at least 11 deaths in the state and another in Georgia, emergency officials said. The fourth landfall came early Saturday about 15 miles north-northeast of Apalachicola.

The storm dumped more than 30 inches of rain on some areas.

Officials on the Emerald Coast prepared for flood waters - offering sand or sandbags for residents in low-lying areas, closing parks, lifting tolls on the Mid-Bay and Garcon Point bridges and readying a shelter at a church in Crestview.

Now a tropical depression, the storm could slow again and possibly stall over southern Mississippi or eastern Louisiana, Rhome said.

The U.S. Coast Guard in Mobile, Ala., closed numerous ports and waterways between Panama City and the Alabama coast.

The Gulf Islands National Seashore closed a campground area and four barrier islands to the public.

Fay's total death toll reached at least 35. Flooding killed 23 people in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

President George W. Bush on Sunday declared a major disaster area exists in Florida and ordered Federal aid to supplement State and local recovery efforts in the areas hit.

At the eastern end of the Panhandle, the Ochlockonee River near Tallahassee flooded Sunday morning. The weather service predicted the river would peak by midnight Tuesday.

"It's going up 27.8 feet and the flood stage is 22," said Beeler. "That's not going to impact Okaloosa or Walton counties. Right now, it looks OK. Unless we were to get a lot more rain than what we think."

Local rivers have not reached flood stages, but waters will rise in the next few days.

"It just depends on the storm and where it dropped," said Ken Wolfe, Okaloosa County's Emergency Management Coordinator. "The rain off from the north could flood the rivers."

At 8:30 a.m. Sunday, the Shoal River at Crestview was 5.22 feet where the flood stage is eight feet. At Mossy Head in Walton County, the Shoal River was at 8.18 feet with a flooding stage of 14 feet.

Beeler monitored the Shoal River at Crestview. "That's the one that sometimes causes the most trouble," he said, estimating that the Shoal will peak at 7.5 feet, just below its flooding stage, early Wednesday evening.

The Yellow River near Milligan was at 2.11 feet with 10 feet to spare before flooding. "It's supposed to peak at nine feet on (Tuesday)," said Beeler.

The Blackwater River reached 2.17 feet Sunday morning. The river's flood stage is 11 feet. The weather service expects it will rise to 7.2 feet by Wednesday.

But the weather service predicts the Choctawhatchee River in Walton County could reach 14.8 feet by 7 a.m. Wednesday morning.

"That's the only one I think is going to flood," said Beeler. "The ones in Okaloosa are close. They get into action stage but not flood stage."

At "action stage" the weather service recommends moving livestock and emergency agencies should pay close attention, but flooding does not occur and evacuations are not necessary.

Fay had been an unusual storm since it was named Aug. 15. After hitting the Florida Keys, it crossed open water again before hitting a second time near Naples on the southwest coast. It limped across the state, popped back out into the Atlantic Ocean and struck again near Flagler Beach on the central eastern coast. Then it briefly entered the Gulf again before making a record fourth landfall.

But on Sunday afternoon, it was nothing but blue skies in Okaloosa County.

"It's a nice day," said Fort Walton Beach resident Justin Shear as he fished off the Shalimar Bridge.

"The fish aren't biting," he said. "But I'm going to hang out with the family."