Tropical Storm Hermine officially strengthened into a hurricane Thursday afternoon and is expected to make landfall along the Florida panhandle as a category 1 storm late Thursday night or early Friday morning.
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The National Hurricane Center said the storm’s top sustained winds ratcheted up from 75 miles per hour in the afternoon to 80 miles per hour by evening as the former tropical storm gained new fury nearing the coast.
Rainfall accumulations of 5 to 10 inches are expected for northwest Florida and southern Georgia through Friday, with an additional 4 to 8 inches of rain anticipated for parts of eastern Georgia and the Carolinas as the storm moves up the coast. The storm is likely to be felt the strongest across the Big Bend of Florida, which is relatively less populated than points west and inland.
Hermine, which is now a Category 1 hurricane, is expected to downgrade back to a tropical storm before it gets to South Carolina Friday afternoon.
The storm became a category 1 hurricane shortly before 2 p.m. and is could reach 75 miles per hour winds, according to the National Hurricane Center. “On Friday, be prepared for possible power outages, flash flooding and blocked roadways”. The storm is forecasted to move east after leaving Florida.
In Pinellas County, home to Clearwater and St. Petersburg, schools were closed for Thursday, and a flood warning was in effect.
“The state is ready for Hurricane Hermine, and we need citizens to get ready, too”, Haley says.
Residents on some islands and other low-lying, flood-prone areas in Florida were urged to clear out earlier Thursday. In all, 500,000 Floridians were under a hurricane warning as of late Thursday. In Leon County, which includes the state capital of Tallahassee, more than 30,000 sandbags were distributed.
The last hurricane to strike Florida was Wilma, a powerful Category 3 storm which arrived on October 24 2005.
Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency for 42 Florida counties on Wednesday as residents braced for the risky weather conditions.
The governor warned people Hermine would be life-threatening and forecasters said the surge of ocean water could be as high as 9 feet above normal levels.
Scott declared a state of emergency for 51 of the state’s 67 counties.
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In Charlotte County in Southwest Florida, “the good news is that’s a place where people have respect for what a hurricane can do”, Wayne Sallade, director of emergency management for the county, said.
