Hurricane Debby has crossed the coast of Florida, bringing with it the potential for record rain, catastrophic flooding and a life-threatening storm surge as it moves slowly across the northern part of the state.
The storm crossed the Big Bend region as a category 1 storm early on Monday near Steinhatchee, a tiny community in northern Florida of less than 1000 residents on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
It had maximum sustained winds of 129km/h and was moving northeast at 17km/h, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
The storm made landfall in one of the least-populated areas of Florida, but forecasters warned heavy rain could spawn catastrophic flooding in Florida, South Carolina and Georgia.
Nearly 214,000 customers were without power in Florida on Monday morning, according to PowerOutage.com.
A tornado watch also was in effect for parts of Florida and Georgia on Monday.
“Right now, we are to trying secure everything from floating away," said Sheryl Horne, whose family owns the Shell Island Fish Camp along the Wakulla River in St. Marks, Florida, where some customers moved their boats inland.
The sparsely populated Big Bend region in the Florida Panhandle also was hit in 2023 by Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall as a category 3 hurricane.
The National Weather Service in Tallahassee said Monday morning that heavy flooding was the biggest concern in the Big Bend regions, with storm surge expected across Apalachee Bay.
Debby was expected to move eastward over northern Florida and then stall over the coastal regions of Georgia and South Carolina, thrashing the region with potential record-setting rains totalling up to 76 centimetres beginning on Tuesday.
Officials also warned of life-threatening storm surge along Florida’s Gulf Coast, with up to three metres of inundation expected on Monday between the Ochlockonee and Suwannee rivers.
“There’s some really amazing rainfall totals being forecast and amazing in a bad way,” hurricane centre director Michael Brennan said at a briefing.
“That would be record-breaking rainfall associated with a tropical cyclone for both the states of Georgia and South Carolina if we got up to the 30-inch (76cm) level.”
Flooding could last through Friday and is expected to be especially severe in low-lying areas near the coast, including Savannah, Georgia; Hilton Head, South Carolina; and Charleston, South Carolina.
Debby is the fourth named storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season after Tropical Storm Alberto, Hurricane Beryl and Tropical Storm Chris, all of which formed in June.
In the eastern Pacific, tropical storms Carlotta, Daniel and Emilia all churned over the ocean, but they weren’t threatening land.
