More than 200,000 customers in Florida are already without power on Monday morning.
Hurricane Debby made landfall in northwestern Florida as a Category 1 storm on Monday morning, according to federal forecasters.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC)
said the storm, which has a maximum of 80 mph sustained winds, hit Steinhatchee, Florida, right after 7 a.m. ET, and it’s expected to bring a “life-threatening storm surge” across Florida’s western coast and “major flooding” in the southeastern United States. Steinhatchee is a small community in Taylor County with about 1,000 residents.
The storm is now moving to the northeast at 10 mph, the NHC said. Already, about 230,000 customers were without power in Florida on Monday,
according to a live tracker provided by PowerOutage.us.
Emergencies have been declared in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina ahead of Debby’s approach as the NHC has
warned that upwards of 30 inches of rain may fall in some areas, namely in the southeastern portion of South Carolina.
“Potentially historic heavy rainfall across southeast Georgia and the coastal plain of South Carolina through Saturday morning will likely result in areas of catastrophic flooding,” the NHC said in a 5 a.m.
bulletin, adding that the rain will come “regardless of the system’s strength.”
The rain, it added, “will likely result in considerable flooding impacts from portions of central and northern Florida and across portions of central and northeast North Carolina through Saturday morning.”
Hurricane Debby is expected to move eastward over northern Florida and then stall over the coastal regions of Georgia and South Carolina, slamming the region with around 15 to 30 inches of rain starting Tuesday.
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.
In Marion County, which is inland and south of Gainesville, sheriff’s officials noted in a Facebook post on Monday that crews were responding to reports of downed power lines and trees that have fallen on roadways and homes.
Aside from the rain, forecasters have warned that Hurricane Debby could spawn tornadoes across the southeastern U.S.
Tornado watches are currently in effect for Georgia and Florida, the National Weather Service (NWS)
wrote in a post on social media platform X.
At a briefing Sunday afternoon, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned the storm could lead to “really, really significant flooding that will happen in North Central Florida.”
The sparsely populated Big Bend region in the Florida Panhandle also was hit last year by Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane.
The storm would follow a similar track to Hurricane Idalia but would “be much wetter. We are going to see much more inundation,” DeSantis, a Republican, said in a news conference.
DeSantis
declared a state of emergency for 61 of Florida’s 67 counties, with the National Guard activating 3,000 guard members. Utility crews from in and out of state were ready to restore power after the storm, he said in a post on X.
“[W]e are absolutely going to see a lot of rainfall. We are going to see a lot of saturation. We are going to see flooding events,” DeSantis said.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster made their own emergency
declarations over the past weekend ahead of the storm’s landfall.
In a statement released by the White House, President Joe Biden on Sunday
approved an emergency declaration for Florida that will shore up federal resources to help with the response.
Federal forecasters predict that the remnants of the storm are expected to also pass over parts of North Carolina. The state’s emergency management agency
wrote on social media that its operations center will move to an “enhanced watch status” starting on Monday morning.
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 did not threaten land.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
