Tropical Storm Fay (2008) in Sebastian, Florida

Tropical Storm Fay dropped 22.25 inches of rain on Sebastian between August 18 and 23, 2008, during what NWS Melbourne calls the wettest tropical cyclone on record for east central Florida, while its winds stayed below hurricane strength (NWS Melbourne).

Fay was a rain event, not a wind event, for Sebastian. The storm came ashore on the southwest coast, crossed Lake Okeechobee and stalled along the Space Coast, so the north end of Indian River County sat under the same bands for most of three days. The National Weather Service office in Melbourne ranked Fay the 4th wettest tropical cyclone to affect Florida and by far the wettest for east central Florida, and its rainfall table lists Sebastian at 22.25 inches, the fifth highest total in the whole report.

The damage record for Indian River County is short. The NWS county table lists minor urban, roadway and lowland flooding, no reported property damage and one indirect death, a motorist who hydroplaned on high water. The heavier losses fell just outside the county line: an EF1 tornado in Barefoot Bay, the Brevard manufactured home community north of Sebastian, and widespread house flooding in Brevard and St. Lucie counties.

Fay stalled over the Sebastian area because its center drifted erratically across western Indian River County on the night of August 19, 2008, then crept north along the Brevard coast instead of moving out to sea (NHC advisory 18).

The National Hurricane Center tracked a slow storm. At 5 p.m. on Tuesday, August 19, the center sat about 60 miles south-southwest of Melbourne with 65 mph winds, heading north-northeast at 8 mph (NHC advisory 17). Six hours later it had reached 27.7 north, 80.7 west, about 30 miles south-southwest of Melbourne, and had been moving erratically while its winds dropped to 50 mph (NHC advisory 18). That position is inland, southwest of Sebastian and west of the St. Sebastian River.

By 5 a.m. on Wednesday, August 20, the center was very near Melbourne and about 15 miles south of Cape Canaveral, moving north at 5 mph (NHC advisory 19). The NOAA Weather Prediction Center summary says Fay moved offshore near Melbourne on the 19th, then stalled, dropping heavy rains for a prolonged period along the coast of east central Florida. Sebastian, about 20 miles south of Melbourne on the Indian River Lagoon, sat under that prolonged rain while the center lingered to its north on August 20 and 21.

Sebastian measured 22.25 inches of rain from Fay, nearly double the 11.34 inches at the Vero Beach airport about 10 miles south (NWS Melbourne).

The Sebastian figure came from a public rain gauge report at 27.78 north, 80.48 west, which the NWS Melbourne report printed beside cooperative observer, CoCoRaHS and airport gauges. The totals fall off quickly to the south. A spotter 5 miles west of Vero Beach logged 17.38 inches, the Vero Beach cooperative station 12.41 inches and a spotter 6 miles south of Vero Beach 10.46 inches. North of the county line, a CoCoRaHS gauge 4.5 miles northwest of Micco caught 16.26 inches.

That gradient matches the storm's path. The heaviest rain fell over southern and central Brevard, where totals passed 20 inches in Melbourne, Cape Canaveral, Cocoa Beach and Satellite Beach, and Sebastian sat at the southern edge of that 20 inch zone. The report notes that most of the rain fell in less than 48 hours, so the 22.25 inches recorded in Sebastian arrived in roughly two days rather than five.

Indian River County reported minor urban, roadway and lowland flooding from Fay, no property damage and one indirect death, far less than neighboring Brevard and St. Lucie counties (NWS Melbourne).

The NWS storm impacts table is the only official county tally. It records that a 43 year old motorist died after hydroplaning on high water and losing control of his vehicle, an indirect storm death, and it lists no damage estimate for Indian River County. An Associated Press report published August 20, 2008 described evacuees from a flooded camper in Vero Beach who took a hotel room inland in Sebastian and planned to leave it because storm water was also pooling there (Associated Press).

The worst nearby damage came from wind on the north side of Sebastian. At 1:45 p.m. EDT on August 19, a rain squall moving onshore produced an EF1 tornado that struck the manufactured home community of Barefoot Bay in south Brevard, damaging 59 residences, leaving 9 uninhabitable and causing two minor injuries (NWS Melbourne). Brevard County counted 1,600 homes damaged by flooding and an early property estimate of about 60 million dollars. To the south, St. Lucie County reported 900 homes damaged by flood water and EF0 tornadoes in Fort Pierce and Stuart.

Sebastian was under a tropical storm warning from August 18 to at least August 22, 2008, first as the warning crept up the coast and later with Sebastian Inlet as its southern end (NHC advisory 27).

The warning reached the Sebastian coast early. At 11 a.m. EDT on Monday, August 18, while Fay was still over the Florida Straits, the National Hurricane Center extended the tropical storm warning on the Florida east coast northward to Cocoa Beach, a line that took in all of Indian River County (NHC advisory 12). On the afternoon of August 19 the warning ran along the east coast from north of Jupiter to Flagler Beach, including Lake Okeechobee (NHC advisory 17).

Fay then wandered back inland near Flagler Beach and west toward Gainesville, yet the coast behind it stayed under watch. At 5 a.m. EDT on August 22, with the center near Gainesville, a tropical storm warning remained in effect from Sebastian Inlet northward to the Savannah River (NHC advisory 27). Sebastian Inlet served as the southern breakpoint of that warning, so the city's beaches and the inlet stayed inside it while coast to the south was cleared.

Fay ranks as the wettest tropical cyclone on record for east central Florida, and its 22.25 inch Sebastian total beat the region's previous storm record of 15.44 inches by almost 7 inches (NWS Melbourne).

The earlier record belonged to Hurricane King, which dumped 15.44 inches on Patrick Air Force Base near Cape Canaveral in 1950, according to the NWS Melbourne storm page. Hurricane Wilma, which crossed south Florida in October 2005, held third place with 13.26 inches at Kennedy Space Center. Fay's regional maximum, 27.65 inches 8 miles northwest of Melbourne, pushed past both, and the Sebastian gauge alone exceeded the old record.

Fay's place in Sebastian storm history is different from the wind storms that shape most local memory. Its peak gust at the Vero Beach airport was 42 knots, about 48 mph, on August 20 UTC, and the NWS report lists Vero Beach's lowest pressure at 995.9 millibars (NWS Melbourne). The lesson in the record is about water: three days of rain over the Indian River Lagoon basin, not a single night of wind, produced the 22.25 inch total recorded in Sebastian.