Tropical Storm Hermine may grow to hurricane strength before the center of the storm makes landfall over the Florida Panhandle Thursday night or early Friday, forecasters warn.
Advertisement
City officials in the state capital Tallahassee, which is in the path of the storm, said at least 32,000 homes were now without power.
Wind: Hurricane conditions are expected to reach the coast within the warning area beginning Thursday night. Winds are already near tropical storm strength in portions of the warning area, making outside preparations hard or risky.
And minor coastal flooding of 1-2 feet above normal will be possible in flood-prone areas through Friday. Georgia Power tweeted on Friday morning that 19,000 people were without power.
“Stay indoors even if it calm outside”. Hermine appears to be forming a compact eye-wall structure, with rings of deep convection firing around the center.
(AP Photo/Chris O’Meara). Spyridon Aibejeris, left, helps his neighbors pull out a trailer off their property along the Gulf of Mexico in advance of Tropical Storm Hermine Thursday, Sept. 1, 2016, in Keaton Beach, Fla.
Residents in some low-lying Florida communities were being asked to evacuate Thursday as the storm approached.
As of the 5 a.m. forecast from the National Hurricane Center, Hermine had 65 mph winds and was about 250 miles south-southwest of Apalachicola moving north-northeast at 12 mph.
Hermine could dump as much as 20 inches (51 cm) of rain in some parts of the state. Mr Scott ordered evacuations in five counties in Florida’s northwest and called for voluntary evacuations in three other coastal counties. “This storm will impact the majority of our state”.
“This is life-threatening”, Scott told reporters on Thursday.
“Those on higher ground are stocking up and hunkering down”, said Pamela Brownlee, the county’s emergency management director.
The National Hurricane Center expects the storm to track across Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas on Friday before reaching the Atlantic Ocean; the track after that is somewhat unpredictable but should keep the storm at least somewhat close to the US coast. That’s when we’ll see the heaviest rain and strongest winds.and also some moderate tidal flooding.
Advertisement
WINDS: Gusty winds near 35 to 45 mph, with gust potentially up to 50 to 55 mph… possibly as high as 60 mph along the islands and also associated with any severe thunderstorm bands moving through. City crews struggled to keep up with demand for sand for
filling sandbags.
