The National Hurricane Center has issued a tropical storm warning for Florida’s Gulf coast from the Anclote River to the Walton/Bay County Line.
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At 5 p.m., the center of Tropical Storm Hermine was located near latitude 25.5 North, longitude 87.4 West.
A tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico is forecast to strengthen to a tropical storm before making landfall Thursday night or Friday morning along the northwest coast of Florida.
Good news for South Mississippi: the long-awaited turn to the northeast has finally begun with Tropical Storm Hermine, according to the NHC on Wednesday afternoon. It was generating a lot of storms, but overall still appeared disorganized and the center was hard to locate.
Tropical depression 9 will make landfall along the Gulf Coast later Thursday, then track over the Southeast and off the Carolina coast by Friday.
The storm was expected to be a Category 1 hurricane on its closest approach to Hawaii’s main island, and minor wind damage along with threat of flash flooding, he said. It’s looking more likely that name will be Hermine. The storm is moving to the west at 1 miles per hour.
The latest track from the National Hurricane Center pushes Hermine into the Coastal Empire early Friday morning and off the SC coast, moving rapidly away from our area Friday evening.
The track of this storm will take it northeast into the big bend of Florida, where hurricane and tropical storm watches are now in effect. Sandbags are available for residents around the Tampa Bay area.
It will also bring a lot of rain.
The coast from Wilmington toward the SC border could see several inches of rain Friday and Friday night, forecasters in the weather service’s Morehead City office said.
And the East Coast could get a lot of rain as well.
It’s likely to bring up to 45 miles per hour winds and heavy rain that could flood low-lying areas.
Rainfall: The depression is expected to produce additional rain accumulations of 2 to 4 inches over western Cuba through today, with maximum storm total amounts up to 20 inches. All watches and warnings for this system have been dropped.
National Weather Service Meteorologist Andrew Hagan says the tropical depression that’s expected to become a tropical storm later Wednesday is keeping the atmosphere more moist than usual.
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Hurricane Gaston, a storm with a 115 miles per hour maximum wind speed, may present a problem for the Azores in the northern Atlantic, but is not a concern for the mainland U.S. Large and damaging surf is also expected along east facing shores of the Big Island as well. Parts of Georgia in yellow are in a Tropical Storm Watch.
