Tropical Storm Debby breaks record with early debut

June 26, 2012 – EARTH – An unusually early spate of tropical storms has been keeping forecasters busy this year, and now Tropical Storm Debby, the fourth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, has set a record – this season marks the first time in more than 150 years that so many storms have showed up so early. “This is first time we’ve had four tropical storms develop in the Atlantic basin before July 1,” said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist and spokesman for the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Fla. U.S. records for tropical storms and hurricanes stretch back to 1851, Feltgen told OurAmazingPlanet. And although Tropical Storm Debby has broken the century-and-a-half-long record, there is certainly a chance that four storms may have formed this early in the past, yet escaped notice simply because forecasters didn’t have the tools to see them. “We figure that back in the day there could have been several storms per season that could have been missed,” Feltgen said. “We didn’t have satellites.” Forecasters relied largely on ship reports and on firsthand observations when a storm hit land. –OAP

Where is Debby going? Forecast models show Debby making landfall along the northern Florida Gulf Coast later this week. Dubbed “Debby Downer” in some local media reports, it could dump more than a foot (30 cm) of rain in some areas of the state, with isolated amounts of more than two feet in north Florida, the hurricane center said. Flash flood warnings were in effect for many areas, including some where streets were already under water, and emergency management officials cautioned that inland flooding was associated with more than half the deaths from tropical cyclones in the United States over the last 30 years. –Reuters