Monday, June 25, 2012 6:21 am Rob Lightbown of Crown Weather says:

Tropical Storm Debby:
Debby has degraded in its appearance overnight due to a combination of dry air intrusion and cooler shelf waters just off of the Florida panhandle. This has caused Debby to weaken to a 50 mph tropical storm this morning. The future of Debby will be very slow and torturous as it is expected to crawl northward over the next few days and according to some of the forecast guidance may not come ashore until Thursday. Given the dry air that Debby has sucked in, a steady-state tropical storm that fluctuates up and down seems likely as it meanders in the far northeastern Gulf of Mexico over the next few days.

So, for today through tonight, my #1 concern is the tornado threat across the Florida Peninsula, especially central and northern Florida. This dry air that is currently across the Gulf of Mexico is expected to push across the Florida Peninsula and create an environment that is favorable for spin-up tornadoes, especially this afternoon into this evening. Additionally, a belt of strong south to southwest low-level winds will create strong low-level shear across especially northern & central Florida and cause rotating supercell thunderstorms.

For tomorrow through tomorrow night, my #1 concern will turn to the flood potentially, especially in the Big Bend area of Florida where up to 8 inches of additional rainfall is expected. A persistently strong onshore wind will also drive a storm surge of up to 3 feet into this area as well. Tornado threat will also continue across mainly central and northern Florida tomorrow afternoon through tomorrow night.

It appears that on Wednesday and Wednesday night that the threat area will concentrate itself along and north of I-4 and south of I-10 in the Florida Peninsula, including Orlando, Saint Augustine, Gainesville and Jacksonville. All threat modes, including tornado, surge and rainfall, will be present in this corridor.

Looking ahead to Thursday, Friday and Saturday timeframe, it gets kind of murky on what will happen with Debby. Some of the guidance like the European model pulls Debby off of Jacksonville and Saint Augustine by Friday and then race it northeastward towards Nova Scotia this coming weekend. The GFS model continues to insist on pulling Debby right across northern Florida on Wednesday and then stalling it just off of Cape Canaveral on Thursday into Friday before pulling it very slowly northeastward just offshore of the Carolinas this coming weekend into early next week and then pulling it towards Nova Scotia near the end of next week. So, it appears that we may have to contend with Debby for quite a while.

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