I believe by now, Tropical Storm Fay has affected every square inch of Florida. Take a look at the tropical storm strength wind swaths of this sucker:
To achieve this wind swath, Fay obligingly twisted and turned, being sure to pause and dump copious amounts rain here and there, as if our wet summer had called for more rain. If it holds according to the forecast, it will have come ashore no less than six times. It also had the dubious honor of being one of the few storms that actually grew in strength while it was over land. The swamps and Lake Ocachobee in South Florida obligingly provided it with enough energy to develop that bulge there near Miami, and then it went offshore and sat next to Melbourne--where much of my family lives--for days.
I know it appears that Tampa/St. Petersburg escaped, but they must have got at least some tropical depression strength weather. (The progression goes like this: tropical wave/disturbance, tropical depression, tropical storm, hurricane.) And the panhandle gets to play with Fay tonight.
Therefore, on the Behavioral Scale (entirely of my own invention), I'd have to rate it Highly Atypical.
To sit through, however, I'd rate Fay as Fairly Typical. For us, it wasn't very exciting. We didn't even lose power. It did get downright tedious. I found it necessary to bake a pan of brownies to relieve the bad moods of everyone in the household. There's nothing like chocolate to perk up bad moods! The most exciting part of the day was when I went down to the end of the road to rescue my neighbor, who was obliged to park her car and trudge through the water, since it was too deep to drive through. Later, we took a jaunt around the neighborhood to see if anything interesting had happened. A few trees leaned over; a few fell, but no damage that we could see.
(We did have an exciting tropical storm in 2004, when Tropical Storm Frances dumped a tree on our house. That's when everyone in the neighborhood came by to stare at and take pictures of our house. That kind of interest and excitement I don't want on a regular basis.)
Overall, I'd rate Tropical Storm Fay as Worth Talking About. I'd recommend it with reservations, but only if the choice was between that and something truly horrible, like an earthquake. Because when it comes facing nature's fury, a tropical storm is about as exciting as I'd want to get.
