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Fay may hit this weekend

• Tropical Storm Fay is expected to drench metro Albany with rain this weekend.

Susan McCord

ALBANY — Tropical Storm Fay is expected to bring heavy rainfall to south Georgia this weekend after coming ashore near Jacksonville Beach on Thursday, but exactly how much remains to be seen, weather officials said.

“Pretty decent” Tropical Storm Fay was working its way up the Florida peninsula Tuesday after making landfall near Lake Okeechobee Tuesday morning, meteorologist Mark Wool of the National Weather Service’s Tallahassee office said.

The storm was headed northeast and expected to move out into the Atlantic Ocean some time during the night, Wool said.

“That’s where things start getting tricky,” he said.

The official forecast shows the storm making a slow bend back to the northwest and coming ashore near Jacksonville Beach Thursday, tracking bands of heavy rain near the Georgia-Florida border Friday through Sunday, Wool said.

“The worst case in Albany is very, very soaking rains, with some gusty winds,” he said.

The storm is expected to lose strength by then and become a tropical depression, which still carries the potential for prolonged bouts of heavy rain, he said.

“Folks in Georgia may recall some of their worst flooding came from a tropical depression — Alberto in 1994, Allison in 2001,” Wool said.

Both storm systems caused major flooding in Southwest Georgia, leading to a swelling Flint River that split Albany in two for several days.

Albany and Dougherty County are preparing for Fay by clearing drains, canals and other waterways to ensure unobstructed drainage in the event of exceptional rainfall, said Jim Vaught, deputy director for the city of Albany and Dougherty County Emergency Management Agency.

“We’ve just tested our sirens again; we’re making some batttery replacements,” Vaught said. “We also have Code Red,” which is the county’s reverse-911 system.

The system calls the phones of residents who have registered their numbers and issues warning messages.