Projections show the outer reaches of the storm could sweep the coastlines of Rhode Island or MA later in the week as Hermine crawls north and northeast.
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It has caused two deaths, inflicted widespread property damage and closed beaches as far north as NY.
“Unless it makes a turn back west. we’re going to be looking at moderate flooding rather than a very severe impact”, Christie told CBS News.Hermine, the first hurricane to make landfall in Florida in 11 years, swept ashore on Friday near the town of St. Marks with winds of 80 miles per hour, knocking out power for 300,000 Florida homes and businesses.
The National Weather Service on Sunday morning reported the storm took a “slightly more eastward track”, reducing it potential impacts inland, but warned of unsafe storm surge in coastal communities at the Jersey Shore over the Labor Day weekend.
On Sunday, Christie said that fine weather made issuing precautions and making preparations “a damned if you do and damned if you don’t” event. “Something is going to happen”.
NHC senior hurricane specialist Daniel Brown told the Guardian, “It’s going to sit offshore and it is going to be a tremendous coastal event with a unsafe storm surge and lots of larger waves probably causing significant beach erosion, for the next few days”.
There is an elevated “threat to life and property” in relation to storm surges, according to the NWS warning, with the potential for the impacts to be felt around high tide at 2:40 p.m. Sunday and roughly every 12 hours thereafter into Tuesday.
Forecasters said the system could strengthen back into a hurricane by Monday morning off the Maryland-Delaware coast before weakening again as it moves north.
There was at least one major auto accident due to the storm. If Hermine regains full tropical status, she will be a tightly wound storm with only peripheral rainbands reaching inland.
A Bruce Springsteen concert scheduled for Saturday in Virginia Beach, Va., was rescheduled for Monday.
Indeed, by Sunday, the storm is expected to meander some 300 miles south and east off the coast, with rain and wind entering the region.
The big threat is still storm surge, which could make tides from Chincoteague, Virginia to Sandy Hook, New Jersey three to five feet above normal, forecasted high tides particularly if the peak surge coincides with the high tide.
In Florida, a homeless man died from a falling tree.
Derrick said the main road was “a little stop and go” traffic when “this weekend would normally be a parking lot”.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe warned Friday that people faced a strong possibility of “life-threatening” storm surges in coastal areas over the weekend. Power was restored to most of Florida State University by the afternoon as well. It also spawned a tornado in North Carolina.
And since sea levels have risen up to a foot due to global warming, the unsafe storm surges predicted to hit the coast from Virginia to New Jersey could be even more damaging, climate scientists say.
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The winds and rain were so strong Saturday in North Carolina that all bridges to the Outer Banks were closed following a deadly accident over the intracoastal waterway.
