PHILADELPHIA _ Tropical Storm Fay has wrung out heavy rains turning streets in Shore towns into a version of Venice by the sea, triggering flood warnings on the mainland, setting a rainfall record Philadelphia, and inundated parts of South Jersey with over 5 inches of rain.
Fay made landfall just north of Atlantic City shortly before 5 p.m., the National Hurricane Center said, quite close to where Sandy arrived on land in 2012, the last time a named storm came ashore in the Garden State.
Along the way it generated heavy rains from the beaches to Philadelphia's western suburbs.
Flooding closed the westbound lanes of the Schuylkill Expressway from the Vine Expressway to Spring Garden, and both the Pennypack and Frankford Creeks sloshed over their banks.
At Atlantic City nearly 2.5 inches had fallen by lunchtime, and about half of that between 9 and 10 a.m.; street flooding was widespread at the Shore, affecting Ocean City, Margate, Sea Isle City, Stone Harbor, and other towns popular with mainland vacationers.
By 4 p.m., just over 3 inches of rain had been measured officially at Philadelphia International Airport, a record for a July 10; the old record was 2.99, set in 1931. In Gloucester County, as much as 5.28 inches was reported.
The weather service also warned that "isolated" tornadoes were possible at the Shore, where gusts up to 49 mph have been measured at the Shore.
The rains have closed portions of Route 322 at Hamilton Township and Route 47 near Route 9 in Rio Grande. NJ Transit's River Line service in Camden was also suspended. Two vehicles were reported to be stranded in high water at Ridge and West Hunting Park Avenues, and the weather service reported a water rescue near Rosetree and Sandy Bank Roads, in Upper Providence Township, Delaware County.
Water temperatures near 80 helped give the storm extra energy to throw back heavy rain bands to the mainland, said Jim Eberwine, former weather service marine forecaster and now the Absecon emergency coordinator.
At 4 p.m., Fay was just about 5 miles from making landfall, probably near or on Long Beach Island, said Alex Starrman, a meteorologist at the weather service office in Mount Holly. Its peak gusts had reached 60 mph _ higher than had been forecast, and its path slightly more westward. Philadelphia reported a tropical-storm force gusts, 37 mph, which was a surprise.
The National Hurricane Center forecast track would have Fay making landfall near the Jersey Shore and then plow through the heart of New Jersey.
It is not a particularly powerful storm, and for most of the region away from the coast, and widespread power outages would be unlikely.
However, the atmosphere is quite juiced, and some places are getting their second significant soaking of the workweek.
The Atlantic Basin hurricane season is less than 6 weeks old and with the birth of Fay late Thursday it already has set a record. It earned it name after its peaks winds passed the minimum naming threshold, 39 mph.
It became the sixth named storm of an Atlantic Basin hurricane season that doesn't end until Nov. 30. In the satellite-tracking era, which began in 1966, the previous record for an "F" storm was July 22, in 2005, said hurricane center spokesperson Dennis Feltgen.
That was the year of Katrina and the busiest and most-destructive U.S. hurricane season on record. The government's National Flood Insurance Program still hasn't recovered from the soaking it took that year.
On average, the sixth named storm of the season, which begins on June 1, does not occur until Sept. 8, but Philip Klotzbach, a hurricane specialist with Colorado State University, said that is no cause for panic.
Klotzbach pointed out that none this year has grown into a hurricane. Saharan dust has suppressed storm development in the hurricane-spawning grounds of the tropical Atlantic.
"There's very little correlation between activity through mid-July and overall hurricane activity," Klotzbach said. "We expect an active season, but it's more due to overall conducive basin-wide conditions _ not a few fairly weak storms which have mostly formed at higher latitudes."
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