Field did warn that local residents should stay out of the water if they head to the beach over the holiday and into Tuesday and Wednesday, since Hermine is expected to linger a couple hundred miles off the coast and cause risky rip currents and surf.
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On Sunday, Hermine was technically a post-tropical cyclone off the shores of Long Island, New York, and Ocean City, Maryland, according to the National Weather Service.
“For your area, this will be pretty much a non-event”, said Glenn Field, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Taunton.
Hermine, a storm that raked Florida with hurricane-force winds last week, drifted far off the U.S. East Coast on Monday, sparing the Middle Atlantic states but forcing some beach closures. Video courtesy Daniel Martinko.
The system was expected to turn north and west later Sunday or Monday, which could threaten the New England coast.
“The combination of a storm surge and the tide will cause normally dry areas near the coast to be flooded by rising waters moving inland from the shoreline”, the Hurricane Center said in a morning advisory. Hermine has left a trail of damage and power outages in its wake across the Southeast and East Coast, and the storm has been blamed for at least two deaths. It spawned a tornado in North Carolina and closed beaches as far north as NY.
“Wind and water hazards of a variety of kinds are things we have to contend with throughout Labor Day weekend”, National Hurricane Center director Rick Knabb said Saturday.
There is also going to be wind gust of 40 miles per hour.
When Hermine ripped into St. Marks in Florida’s Big Bend region just before 2 a.m. Friday, it became the first hurricane to come ashore in the state since Wilma struck 11 years ago.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced in Toms River the availability of additional federal disaster aid for superstorm Sandy recovery that is expected to benefit the township and other Shore municipalities. Residents in states as far north as CT are expected to feel its damaging impact.
Since sea levels have risen up to a foot due to global warming, the storm surges pushed by Hermine could be even more damaging, climate scientists say.
Potential storm-surge inundation levels of no more than 1 to 3 feet (30 cm to 1 m) were expected in coastal areas. “And it’s only the beginning”.
One person died Saturday when a tractor-trailer overturned while crossing a bridge in eastern North Carolina amid high winds from Hermine, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Public Safety, Michael Baker, said.
For now, its strongest winds were extending outward by about 230 miles (370 km), failing to reach US shores.
The storm’s latest fatality occurred Saturday, September 3, when heavy winds propelled an 18-wheel truck into a bridge railing in North Carolina, killing the unidentified driver, authorities told Agence France-Presse.
Earlier in Florida, a homeless man was killed by a falling tree.
Hermine had already struck Florida, North Carolina and Virginia hard during its journey to the Northeast, which began Friday.
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Labor Day: Sunny, with a high near 85. The cancellation of two concerts due to the weather kept a lot of people away, Islam said. His family businesses include a mini golf course, sea shell store, indoor bounce house and ice cream shop in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where the beach was closed to foot traffic and swimming was prohibited Saturday.
