The tropical storm warnings for towns were replaced Monday morning by a coastal flood advisory that was scheduled to remain in effect until 5 a.m. Tuesday.
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“Current radar trends keep the heaviest rain well south of southern New England with only showery bands approaching the Cape and Islands”, forecasters wrote.
Many business owners at the Jersey Shore were seething Sunday, and who can blame them. Do not go into the water. Instead, Delaware should brace for another round of hot-and-dry weather, with temperatures climbing to at least the high 80s Tuesday and above 90 Wednesday. So Hermine will rain on your Labor Day parade if you live in these areas. “We should be reasonably safe”, said meteorologist Doug Mercer, who is based in Dartmouth, N.S., with the centre.
At Reeds Beach in Middle Township, a small community on the Delaware Bay that flooded during Hurricane Sandy, the roads were clear and the winds were calm on Labor Day morning. But hundreds, if not thousands of people, descended onto the beach for the traditional last weekend of summer.
Swimming in the ocean has been prohibited during the storm.
Jim Derrick, a co-owner of family businesses, reported traffic lighter than usual.
“This weekend would normally be a parking lot”, he said in a telephone interview.
He called the weekend “definitely disappointing”, although his bounce house was packed.
Still, his indoor bounce house was packed Saturday, and the rain stopped long enough for him to open the mini golf course. It was the first hurricane to hit the state in more than a decade.
Storm surge is also expected: The hurricane center said 1-2 feet would be possible from Fire Island Inlet to Port Jefferson Harbor if the peak surge coincides with high tide.
Hermine made landfall Thursday as a hurricane in Florida, passed through Georgia and the Carolinas before returning to the Atlantic as a post-tropical cyclone on Saturday.
Hermine could reach wind speeds of 75 miles per hour as it strengthens Sunday, forecasters say.
By Sunday night, the National Hurricane Center said the storm was moving about 5 mph out to sea, about 370 miles east of Ocean City, Maryland, and 325 miles southeast of the eastern tip of Long Island.
As of now, Hurricane Hermine is not expected to cause the same level of devastation in the Northeast as it did in the South Atlantic region of the U.S.
Governors along the Eastern Seaboard announced emergency preparations. The further north and west you get from the Shore, you’ll find mostly sunny skies and lighter winds.
“It’s going to sit offshore and it is going to be a tremendous coastal event with a risky storm surge and lots of larger waves probably causing significant beach erosion, for the next few days”, said senior hurricane specialist Daniel Brown.
Michael Mann, at Pennsylvania State University, said the 1-foot rise that New York City has experienced over the past century caused an additional 25 square miles and several billions of dollars of damage with Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
“We are already experiencing more and more flooding due to climate change in every storm”, said Michael Oppenheimer, a geosciences professor at Princeton University.
High winds tipped over an 18-wheeler on Saturday, killing its driver and shutting down the US 64 bridge in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. In Florida, a homeless man in Marion County was hit by a falling tree and was killed.
A Bruce Springsteen concert scheduled for Saturday in Virginia Beach, Va., was rescheduled for Monday.
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The Steamship Authority said they temporarily canceled trips to Nantucket during the storm, and are continuing Vineyard ferries on a trip-by-trip basis. “People can walk on the beach and be on the sand, just not in the water”, he said.
