The big wet nothing: Much-hyped weather event left Palm Beach County soggy but unbruised

It really did look like the makings of a tropical storm, the meteorologist said.

Robert Molleda gathered at a National Weather Service office in Miami with a team of weather experts and a soon-depleted box of doughnuts Thursday, intent on tracking the storm. It had weakened from Hurricane Agatha to the meeker-sounding Potential Tropical Cyclone One after hitting Mexico, but showed signs of regaining strength as it approached South Florida.

It never did. Preliminary Weather Service figures show southeastern and coastal parts of Palm Beach County received between 7 and 9 inches of rain since Thursday night, though no damage was reported to the county by 6 p.m. Saturday, said John Jamason, deputy director of public affairs.

The storm that wasn't: Soggy system brought little wind, dumped 7-9 inches on parts of PBC

Florida tropical storm warnings lifted: Potential Tropical Cyclone One heads off Florida coast

The threat of a tropical storm over Palm Beach County was officially lifted by 1 p.m. Even earlier than that, business owners along Clematis Street began to open their storefronts.

"I think we can deal with this kind of rain, right?" asked Allison Boettcher, owner of Blue Mountain Coffee House. "I didn't see trees being rooted out or broken."

She'd heard that the weekend's storm could bring property damage and massive flooding, but she said she didn't see anything like that on her 40-minute commute to the coffee shop Saturday.

Like Boettcher, much of Palm Beach County had held its breath the evening before in anticipation of the tropical storm. Libraries, parks and beaches closed Saturday, and the passengers of at least 22 canceled flights at the Palm Beach International Airport scrambled to rebook.

Blue Mountain Coffee House opened its doors at 8 a.m. nevertheless. The pandemic had taken enough of a toll on her business, Boettcher said, and she wouldn't let a bit of rain do the same.

"Every day is important for us to survive," she said.

Customers walked inside drenched and dripping, but most, she said, came with smiles on their faces anyway.

Within hours, pilots in hurricane hunter planes would radio back to Molleda and the team at the National Weather Service in Miami. They couldn't find the telltale wind circulation indicative of a tropical depression or storm.

Winds above were too strong, and they blew the thunderstorms away from what would have been the center of the storm. The resulting weather system was scattered and disorganized.

"It tried," Molleda said. "That circulation center just never got organized enough."

Thomas Williams, 62, said he'd predicted as much when he checked the weather radar Friday night on his phone from a cubbyhole on Artists Alley in Delray Beach, where he lives. He said he closed his eyes and got comfy.

"That's not a tropical storm," Williams recalled thinking. He stood on Clematis Street in West Palm Beach on Saturday and motioned to the sky, which had brightened significantly by 2 p.m. "That's just a glorified thunderstorm."

Williams, in a tie-dye shirt from the Bahamas, reclined on a bicycle and people-watched while his phone charged. He laughed when he saw a passerby try to shield himself from the rain beneath a plastic bag.

"I've been through a hundred of these things," Williams said. "It's God's storm. He's going to do with it what he wants, and there's nothing I can do about it. So I might as well just go to sleep."

Though county officials closed up shop Saturday for the would-be storm, they said in the afternoon operations would be back to business as usual for Sunday.

As flooding advisories begin to wind down across South Florida, so, too, do the operations at the National Weather Service in Miami.

"These systems can be pretty hard to predict," Molleda said. "In this case, it fortunately stayed very disorganized."

Heavier rainfall drenched parts of the Keys and Miami-Dade County, where residents posted scenes of waist-high water and stranded cars on flooded streets to social media.

The weather system's disorganization reduced what might have been tropical storm-force winds to unstained gusts as it slid across the peninsula.

But there's still hope for the storm, now that it's left Florida.

The National Hurricane Center said forecast models suggest the system would "develop and maintain a more familiar tropical cyclone-like structure as it heads northeastward and east-northeastward over the western Atlantic through Monday."

The disturbance, which may then be Tropical Storm Alex, will pass north of Bermuda on Monday and head in to the central Atlantic, where it is expected to become an extratropical low, the NHC said.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Potential Tropical Cyclone One brought heavy rain to Palm Beach County