The National Weather Service has issued tropical storm watches and warnings for our southern beaches and a flash flood watch for Robeson and Bladen counties Friday through Saturday morning.
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Storm surges and tides could present their own life-threatening problems, potentially pushing 1 to 8 feet of water into normally dry coastal areas from Destin on the Panhandle to Tampa in west-central Florida, the hurricane center said. The greatest threat for tornadoes is Thursday afternoon, the Storm Prediction Center forecast.
Tropical Storm Hermine has threatened to bring a unsafe storm surge and flooding to Florida after it strengthened over the Gulf of Mexico.
“Typically these storms lose strength once they hit land, so the [Beaufort County] area shouldn’t expect anything above tropical storm conditions,”James Carpenter, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Charleston, said”.
The storm, spinning in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday morning, threatens to slam into the Panhandle area or just south of it after midnight, bringing heavy rain and possible risky storm surges. He said he was mostly anxious about the new equipment he’d recently purchased for the waterfront restaurant. If it is, it’ll be the first hurricane to strike Florida in 11 years, which smashes the old record of a four-year span between hurricanes.
Hermine’s maximum sustained winds remain near 60 miles per hour.
Flooding is expected across a wide swath of the Big Bend area, which has a mostly marshy coastline.
The storm should head northeast through northern Florida tonight, and into Georgia by late Thursday night.
“This building right here is pretty safe and pretty strong so I think it will be all right”, Keeton said.
Friday night lights will be Thursday night lights in many areas of SC this week.
Gov. Rick Scott said in a news release Wednesday that Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Holmes, Washington, Manatee, Osceola and Sarasota counties are now covered by his emergency order.
Hermine was about 200 miles from the coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico as of late Thursday morning, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The storm is expected to make landfall in Florida early Friday and by early Saturday the center of circulation should be near the Wilmington area.
The Tallahassee Democrat (http://on.tdo.com/2c2jFxe) reports emergency management officials in Franklin County have issued a mandatory evacuation notice for people living on St. George Island, Dog Island, Alligator Point and Bald Point.
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A wide swath of eastern North Carolina could receive between 6 inches and 10 inches of rain during the next three days.
