Lessons from Fay

That was a close one, literally.

Tropical Storm Fay managed to drench most of Florida, save for the central Panhandle, including Franklin County, as the area seemed to bathe in the eye of the storm for much of its passing.

This was a tropical storm that dumped up to 33 inches in some spots on the Sunshine State and the local impacts pretty much came down to three isolated power outages, a few inches of rain and downed trees.

With the Labor Day weekend upon us and Gustav taking shape hundreds of miles away in the Caribbean, however, Fay provided some valuable reminders.

1. Err on the Side of Caution

While many joked about "what storm?" county elected officials pretty much made the right calls throughout.

The forecasts school officials had to work with Thursday afternoon had initial bands hitting the area at midday or earlier on Friday. The potential for problems on the roadways - for buses and parents coming to get their children from school - weighed against trying to get a day in so early in the year when there is time to make it up.

Further, by declaring a local state of emergency early on, county officials put emergency management staff in the proper posture to act accordingly in the face of wildly divergent forecasts of and actions by the storm.

Emergency management officials and staff should be commended for being informative and calming at the same time.

And they reminded us all, as did this storm, that individual common sense is the ultimate shelter. The household plan should now be in place, wherever you are.

2. Luck is a Lady

For all the havoc Fay wreaked around the state, this area was simply darn lucky. Watching the storm on radar as it approached over the weekend was like observing a lasso that never fully closed around its target.

This portion of North Florida stayed in the calmer eye of the storm for hours on end while heavy rains and winds buffeted areas to our immediate north, south, east and west.

At press time there were still concerns about rising river levels and rains continued to fall to the north compounding the anxiousness, but for the most part beaches were none the worse for wear, roads held up and trees and power lines stayed upright.

Luck should not, however, be a rationale for complacency.

3. Predict the Unpredictable

If Tropical Storm Fay accomplished anything it was underscoring that predicting the movement and intensity of tropical storms and hurricanes is, for all the fancy gadgetry, still something of a dart-at-the-bull's-eye sort of thing.

As often as the National Weather Service conducted webinars and conference calls for local officials, forecasters there hit predictions for this area about as often as a bettor nails the trifecta at the horse track.

Hurricanes are Mother Nature's ultimate slap at meteorologists. Floridians have long understood that weather forecasts can have a shelf life of an hour or so; tropical storms just rub in the point.

And the folks in Melbourne and Okeechobee and other spots on the state map would be hard pressed right now to explain the distance between a tropical storm and a hurricane.

4. Dial down the Excitement

This is aimed at those in the television media for whom such storms are a reason to fall through the wall of perspective.

It was a storm, not the war. One Weather Channel "on the spot reporter" attempted a back-and-forth dissection of the storm with a studio analyst that sounded like they were breaking down the Electoral College.

A couple of local weather talking heads seem to equate Fay's arrival as almost a religious experience.

Think Peter and that pesky wolf. At some point the hype, repeated enough, becomes an annoying din and that is the last thing listeners need.