Aug 18, 2008 11:57 pm US/Eastern
Track Fay's Rain, Winds Down To The Neighborhood
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
As bands of rain pound your house, it's likely you wondered just how much rain actually fell on your yard as Tropical Storm Fay barreled up the coast. Forecasters can give you a general idea, but rainfall can very widely from neighborhood to neighborhood. The only way to know for sure is to set up your own rain gauge, or to use CBS4.com's
WeatherBug neighborhood weather stations.
Set up at schools and government offices from Key West to Boca Raton, the local stations can give you a neighborhood snapshot of your weather especially valuable in severe weather like tropical storms or hurricanes.
Using the WeatherBug stations, we were able to find that Key West sustained wind gusts approaching 50 mph as Fay moved over the Immaculate Star of the Sea, where more than 2 and a half inches of rain fell Monday.
Up the overseas highway in Marathon, the wind gusts just broke 40 mph at Marathon Airport but almost 6 and a half inches of rain was reported in the WeatherBug rain gauge.
On the mainland, 2 and a half inches of rain was reported at Homestead Air Reserve Base, 2 inches at Cutler Ridge Middle School, 2.7" at the city of Miami Fire Rescue headquarters, and 2.8 inches at the CBS4 studios in Doral.
The closer to the ocean, it seems, the heaver the rainfall. Sunny Isles saw almost 10" of rain in it's WeatherBug gauge at the city police department.
The city of Plantation saw just under 2 inches, while Miramar High school saw 3 and a half inches.
In most places, wind gusts did not exceed 50 MPH.
While the WeatherBug stations are not official government monitoring stations, they use the same type of professional equipment and provide information at a far larger number of points, giving access to information closer to your home than official stations can offer.
Many of the stations also offer weather cameras, where you can not only check local conditions but you can take a look at the sky to get a realtime view of conditions. CBS4.com offers more than 2 dozen cameras from South Dade to Boca Raton.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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