Tropical Storm Julia Forms Over Florida Land

I was surprised last night while watching the eleven o'clock local news during my final break at work to discover that a new tropical storm, named Julia, had formed and was in the Jacksonville vicinity.  But I wasn't aware until a few minutes ago that Julia had developed into a tropical storm while its center of circulation was over land...about five miles west of Jacksonville.  This is the first recorded instance of a tropical depression intensifying into a named tropical storm while centered over Florida land, although Beryl likewise intensified while over Louisiana in 1988.  Normally, someone like me living in Gainesville would be concerned about so near a storm as Julia, but almost all of its bad weather lies to its east, over the ocean.  After passing through Jacksonville without much concern other than winds of around 40 mph and strong rip currents along the beaches, it has maintained its minimal tropical storm strength and drifted on northward, at this writing centered in the vicinity of Savannah, Georgia.  There are no steering currents to send Julia on any discernible trajectory, and the various computer models are all over the map regarding where it will eventually go...

It's funny how, with some tropical storms...such was the case with Hermine...we'll go on for days and days noting its position, the prospects for it strengthening, and wondering what direction it will take.  And then there's a storm like Julia that seems to have formed out of nowhere and is suddenly right on us.  And along the lines of storms involving days of anticipation, it's just been announced that there is a new, strong tropical depression that just came off the coast of Africa...