NY officials extended beach closures beyond Labor Day because of continued deadly rip currents.
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The good news, according to the weather service, is that there is no significant rainfall or damaging wind gusts expected on Sunday.
Tropical storm-force winds were possible on Labor Day in New Jersey.
Moderate to major flooding is expected in Seaside Heights, New Jersey; Atlantic City, New Jersey; Cape May, New Jersey; Lewes, Delaware; and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, during the high tide cycles starting Sunday night and extending into Monday night.
“Don’t get lulled by the nice weather”, Christie warned. “It was just the most bad thing you think would happen”.
Overnight, the center of the storm moved farther east and away from the coast than previously forecast, said Rick Knabb, director of the National Hurricane Center (NHC), in a webcast.
The National Weather Service meteorologists said Hermine could stay 100 to 200 miles offshore through midweek with some potential for the storm to regain hurricane strength over the warm Atlantic Ocean.
It will meander off the mid-Atlantic coast for the next day or two, and after that, the storm is expected to move in a northeast direction again and head out to sea.
Long Island authorities urged people to evacuate the popular summer getaway of Fire Island to avoid any storm surge and coastal flooding.
Hermine ripped into St. Marks in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 1 storm just before 2 a.m. Friday, becoming the first hurricane to come ashore in the state since Wilma struck 11 years ago.
Surging tides from the storm could be as high as 5 feet from Chincoteague Island, Virginia, north to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. One has already hit in North Carolina, so please be safe! Homes raised on stilts were standing high above the water.
Pedestrians courageous rain and wind in Virginia Beach, Va.
The Florida Division of Emergency Management said on Twitter on Sunday that almost 80,000 utility customers were still without electricity. Emergency managers issued mandatory evacuations for some low-lying mobile home parks and apartment buildings.
Early Sunday morning, Hermine was centered about 240 miles southeast of Ocean City, Maryland, according to ABC News.
Sea level rise caused by climate change could mean the damage wrought by Post-Tropical Cyclone Hermine will be even greater than previous surges, scientists warned this weekend.
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. “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.
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The storm’s latest fatality occurred when winds estimated between 95 to 110 kilometers per hour blew an 18-wheeler across highway lanes in North Carolina and propelled the cab into the railing of a bridge, killing the unidentified driver, Tyrrell County Sheriff Darryl Liverman told AFP.
