Todd Solomon, who lives in an area of Virginia Beach that often floods, said Hermine failed to make the list of the top five storms he’s seen.
Advertisement
“I had a barbecue planned at my home, some of my friends from NY and Long Island were supposed to come down for the day and stay the night, but we had to cancel on Saturday”, Jones said on the Asbury Park Boardwalk.
Another NHC specialist Eric Blake said: “This is not a beach weekend for anyone in the Mid-Atlantic to the north-east”.
Gov. Chris Christie said Hermine won’t come close to having the same destructive power as Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
At 11 a.m. Sunday, Hermine’s top sustained winds strengthened to 70 miles per hour (110 kph) as it moved east-northeast at 10 miles per hour (17 kph). The storm was centered about 230 miles (365 kilometers) southeast of the eastern tip of Long Island.
Out to sea, Hermine is expected to regain hurricane-force winds – about 75 miles per hour – sometime during the remainder of the holiday weekend, although the National Weather Service will not officially call it a hurricane.
Hermine will remain a force to reckon with Sunday, as it travels northeast along the East Coast, before an expected northward turn later Sunday.
The former tropical storm is slowly moving out to sea, but it’s creating risky rip currents and storm surges.
Governors along the Eastern Seaboard announced emergency preparations.
Post-tropical storm Hermine, located about 200 miles south of Long Island, began to turn northwesterly a few hours ago and is now moving in a direction that will be bringing it closer to CT.
Hermine is a huge storm, but it’s a slow-moving one.
The almost 3-mile long bridge crosses the Intracoastal Waterway and is the main link from the North Carolina mainland to the Outer Banks. The bridges were reopened later Saturday.
High winds tipped over an 18-wheeler on Saturday, killing its driver and shutting down the US 64 bridge in North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
And The Associated Press reported that on Hatteras Island in the Outer Banks, a small tornado spawned by Hermine knocked over two trailers and injured four people.
A homeless man in Marion County, in the northern part of the state, died when a tree was ripped from the ground by high winds and fell on him.
States in the Northeast are preparing for Hermine’s wrath: New Jersey has declared a state of emergency for Ocean, Atlantic and Cape May counties.
As the storm wound its way up the coast on Sunday after killing two people and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands in Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia last week, National Hurricane Center (NHC) director Rick Knabb warned in a webcast that Hermine “could become hurricane force again”.
Labor Day weekend plans that include a beach trip may have to change for residents living in coastal areas from Virginia to CT. New York City beaches would remain closed to swimmers on Labor Day and possibly Tuesday, the city said. The island, a narrow barrier island off Long Island’s southern coast, which fills with beach house owners and renters on weekends – especially long ones – was under a voluntary evacuation warning Sunday.
In Savannah, Georgia, Bacon Fest was canceled Friday and Saturday’s Craft Brew Fest was moved indoors.
Advertisement
So, Sunday night into Monday will be the peak of the storm.
