'Big rain storm' marches west

Bands of heavy rain continued to march west across South Georgia this afternoon, as Tropical Storm Faye turned out to be the "big rain storm" that forecasters expected. After two days of waiting with overcast skies and only spotty rain on Wednesday and Thursday, Friday's worst in the Savannah area brought spotty power outages, localized flooding, some traffic tie-ups and downed tree limbs.

Possible tornadoes spotted this morning by National Weather Service doppler radar in counties north of Savannah, including Effingham, Bulloch, Jenkins and Screven Counties, did not result in calls to emergency services, those services reported this afternoon. Roads were clear and "all quiet here" was the going phrase among emergency services personnel contacted by GPB.

Today, residents in the Savannah area awoke to no power. As many as 9,000 people were without power at the height of an early morning outage, but crews restored power to most before noon. Tybee Island and Savannah's Southside were the most effected. Georgia Power brought in extra crews, but didn't have to use them, because local crews were sufficient, company officials said.

Georgia's southern coast appears to be getting the heaviest rain. There were reports of some minor street flooding in St. Mary's, some traffic tie-ups on Interstate-95 and a lot of disruption in Jacksonville, where officials attributed several traffic fatalities to the storm. Officials in three South Georgia counties, Camden, Glynn and McIntosh, and officials at Valdosta city schools cancelled classes today for those safety reasons.

But even in South Georgia, the storm, so far, has been a bigger wait than anything. Lowndes County spokesman Paige Dukes said, "People in South Georgia are prepared for storms. They've been through this before. But, this is the longest we've had to wait for a storm." Fay made landfall in the Florida Keys on August 15.