Weather experts: Alberto was never 'a serious threat'

Tropical Storm Alberto, the first named storm of the 2006 hurricane season, reached Florida’s shores Tuesday. And though its effects in Collier County were minimal, officials said it served as a reminder to residents to be prepared for future storms.

“We’ve been trying to remind folks that even though it didn’t seem like much of a hit, it was a wake-up call,” said WBBH-TV NBC-2 Chief Meteorologist Robert Van Winkle. “It’s time to pay attention to the tropics. The next one could be a lot closer.”

Jim von Rinteln, emergency management coordinator for Collier County, said the attention paid to Alberto, a storm that never became a hurricane, was overblown.

“We kept our eye on the storm, but we never saw it as a serious threat,” he said.

Von Rinteln said he could only shake his head when he saw some television news reports call Alberto the first serious storm of the year.

“It was never a major storm,” he said. “It was just the first named storm.”

Forecasters said over the weekend they were expecting South Florida to receive between 6 and 10 inches of much-needed rain from Alberto. By Tuesday afternoon the total rainfall for Collier County, which is measured at the Naples Municipal Airport, stood at less than an inch since Sunday, Van Winkle said.

Continued southwest winds will bring in tropical moisture after Alberto has passed, he said.

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Nick Perretta practices the Brazilian martial art Capoeira under the cloudy skies caused by Tropical Storm Alberto on Vanderbilt Beach on Tuesday morning. The storm brought little to Southwest Florida besides clouds, rainfall and some gusty winds.

“It rained a lot harder in Lee and Charlotte counties,” Van Winkle said Tuesday afternoon. “The window of opportunity (for rain) is still there.”

State forestry officials were hopeful that rain from Alberto would help lessen drought conditions in the region, which led to wildfires. Gerry LaCavera, a wildfire mitigation specialist for the state Division of Forestry, said Saturday the foresters already are responding to three to 10 lightning fires a day.

LaCavera said Tuesday he didn’t know if the sporadic rain from Alberto will be enough to lower the fire risk.

“What we really need is a steady rain that will sink in, not a deluge that just runs right off again,” he said. “We just want to see the vegetation wet enough that it is not going to ignite and we can get the fires under control quickly.”

When Alberto’s center came ashore around noon near Adams Beach, its winds were measured at 40 mph, down from 65 mph in the morning, the Associated Press reported. Van Winkle said peak wind gusts at the Naples airport were about 25 mph.

“You may have had a few gusts of 30 mph,” he said.

Gas station operators in Southwest Florida said drivers did not panic about potential fuel shortfalls, and AAA of Florida reported much the same sense of calm.

“This wasn’t a prolonged situation. The storm is already out of here,” AAA spokesman Randy Bly reported from Tampa late Tuesday afternoon. “Any time there is a disruption, the result could be a rise in gas prices, but I have not received any reports of a significant increase in gas prices.”

Not only were there no reported shortages, but gas prices decreased from Monday to Tuesday, he said.

The state average cost per gallon of regular unleaded was $2.858 on Monday, but dropped to $2.854 on Tuesday, he said.

At about 5 p.m. Florida Power & Light reported it had 1,800 customers without power statewide, spokeswoman Karen Vissepo said. At the storm’s peak there were no more than 11,000 customers without power, she said.

“Based on the path and intensity of the storm we deployed resources — employees — from the south area to the west coast and to the northern area of Florida,” Vissepo said. “I’m sure those resources will move back to their normal base stations (today).”

In Immokalee, Tuesday’s rainy weather wasn’t bad enough to keep farm workers from the fields. Monica Fish, director of the Immokalee Friendship House homeless shelter, said no one visited the shelter asking for aid because of the storm.

Rick Heers, who was instrumental in starting the nonprofit Immokalee Helping Our People in Emergencies, visited several of the mobile homes of which the organization has been fixing the roofs. He took three pictures of homes with blue tarps that leak when it rains.

Heers, an assistant pastor at Friendship Baptist Church in Immokalee, said he hopes to have the roofs fixed by Thursday.

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Staff writers Larry Hannan, I.M. Stackel and Tracy X. Miguel contributed to this report.