The National Hurricane Center said the centre of the storm made landfall just east of Charleston, South Carolina, on the Isle of Palms around 8:30 a.m.
Advertisement
Forecasters said they expected the storm to produce 1 to 3 inches of additional rainfall across eastern SC, eastern North Carolina, and southeast Virginia, with isolated showers, the National Hurricane Center said.
Tropical storm Bonnie was downgraded Sunday morning as it headed toward the SC coast – the latest bad weather to hit the nation over the long holiday weekend, after a fourth person was found dead amid flooding in Texas.
Maximum sustained winds had dropped to 35 miles an hour when the national Hurricane Center declared at 8 a.m. that the second-named storm of the hurricane season was fading.
Forecasters detected 40 miles per hour winds in the storm Saturday night, making it the season’s second-named tropical storm, four days before the official start of hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean.
Tropical Depression Bonnie is making for another bad beach day along the SC coast. With some spots in the Cape Fear region picking up close to 3 inches of rain already, isolated flooding isn’t out of the question, through I’d look for more nuisance showers than danger in the area.
Lifeguards in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina were warning people of unsafe rip currents, which can suddenly pull swimmers out to deep waters.
It will move a bit inland then veer slowly to the northeast, skirting the South and North Carolina coast before moving just off shore near Cape Hatteras early Wednesday.
The Columbia area could see 2 to 3 inches of rainfall from some bands of the storm, Hunter Coleman, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, said last week.
Tropical storm warnings are up all along the SC coast as a tropical depression moves toward shore. Several of them indicate very little rain, but some indicate the possibility of morning and/or afternoon showers.
“It won’t have a direct impact on us”, he said.
Advertisement
Temperatures will remain cool in the morning with the rain and cooler breeze, with much cooler weather expected along the coast with the brief northeast wind. Some of the strongest rip currents – channels of fast moving waters that pull out from the beach back into the ocean – were reported along the south Brevard beaches. No evacuations had been ordered. Hurricane season officially begins June 1.
