New York City is under a tropical storm warning.
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Some storm models hint the storm could wander closer to the coast, creating significantly more potential for damage to beach communities.
High winds from tropical storm Hermine make their way north and effects can be seen as waves crash into shore on Sunday in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Labor Day weekend plans for vacationers headed to beaches along the Atlantic seaboard were dampened after the storm battered Florida’s $89 billion tourism industry. The center of Hermine moved across eastern North Carolina early Saturday.
“This is not a beach weekend for anyone in the Mid-Atlantic to the northeast”, said Eric Blake, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
At 11 a.m. (1500 GMT), the center of the fourth named storm of the 2016 Atlantic hurricane season was just off the northern Outer Banks of North Carolina, with top winds strengthening slightly to near 65 miles per hour (100 kph), the hurricane center said.
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.
In Connecticut on Sunday, there was little sign of the storm.
The surge was expected to extend from Virginia to New Jersey.
The center forecast the heaviest rains to remain offshore, with Hermine expected to produce 1 to 2 inches of rain through Monday from Long Island to eastern MA.
An estimated 325,000 people were without power statewide and more than 107,000 in neighboring Georgia, officials said.
“I’d like to thank all of our residents and guests for continuing to take precautions to keep themselves and their property safe during this storm event”, he said.
The last hurricane to strike Florida was Wilma, a powerful Category 3 storm that arrived on October 24, 2005.
Friday evening, the National Hurricane Center said it expects Hermine to gain strength once it moves out to sea.
Governors all along the coast announced emergency preparations as tropical storm warnings went into effect as far north as CT.
While Hermine is forecast to stall as it moves north, much of New England and interior areas of the mid-Atlantic are likely to escape the full wrath of the storm.
Forecasters said the storm is expected to move over the Atlantic Ocean soon and threatens a unsafe storm surge into Hampton Roads in southeast Virginia.
Pennsylvania State University geosciences professor Michael Mann told the Guardian, “We are already experiencing more and more flooding due to climate change in every storm”. “And it’s only the beginning”.
Powerful winds approaching 40 miles per hour knocked down trees and power lines from North Carolina’s Outer Banks to Maryland.
Tyrrell County Sheriff Darryl Liverman told CBS News that high winds tipped over an 18-wheeler, killing its driver and shutting down the USA 64 bridge.
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Overnight, four people suffered minor injuries when a tornado hit a campground in Hatteras Village, Dare County, North Carolina, officials said. A homeless man in Marion County, in the northern part of the state, died when a tree was ripped from the ground by high winds and fell on him.
