What was once Hurricane Hermine weakened Monday night as the storm drifted back toward the Northeast, bringing some power outages, risky rip currents and strong winds in coastal areas of New England and New York’sLong Island.
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The warning was due to high surf, rip currents and wind gusts of between 40 and 50 miles per hour on the shoreline.
NHC said a slow and erratic motion is expected for the rest of today and tonight, followed by a slow motion toward the northeast on Wednesday, Sept. 7.
A tropical storm warning remains in effect Tuesday from Long Island to MA. Storm system Hermine spun away from the U.S. East Coast on Sunday, removing the threat of heavy rain but maintaining enough power to churn risky waves and currents and keep beaches off-limits to disappointed swimmers and surfers during the holiday weekend. The post-tropical storm still has winds of 65mph as it churns off the southern New England coast.
Wind gusts of 58 mph were recorded at 11:23 a.m. on Nantucket, 59 mph on Aquinnah at 3:52 p.m., and 53 mph in Edgartown at 1:02 p.m. and Falmouth at 4:19 p.m., the weather service said. Whatever the heck it is, it’s already caused damage in Florida and power outages in Georgia and South and North Carolina, and is expected to produce life threatening storm surges in New Jersey and NY over the course of today.
Forecasters say Hermine could regain hurricane force later Sunday as it travels up the coast before weakening again to a tropical storm by Tuesday.
A tropical storm warning remained in effect Sunday night from the DE and New Jersey shores north to New York’s Long Island and beyond to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Island off MA, but was canceled for New York City, which Berg said appeared largely out of harm’s way. The storm was moving northwest at 16 miles per hour with maximum sustained wind of 75 miles per hour. The eastern track means a less severe impact, but you’re still going to see beach erosion, storm surges and unsafe rip currents.
At 1:55 p.m. EDT (17:55 UTC) on September 5, NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite passed over Hermine and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite captured a visible image of the storm lingering off the coast of NY and southern New England.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said they will remain off-limits to swimmers and surfers on Monday, too.
While many communities felt like they dodged a bullet, the threat of Hermine caused many vacationers to cancel their holiday plans.
Mahabub Khan, a cart peddler who works the Jersey Shore, said the crowds were noticeably smaller this year after Hermine warnings reached the hurricane level. John Mayes, 56, was sleeping in a tent behind a gas station in Ocala, about 65 miles northwest of Orlando, when a tree fell onto him Thursday night, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office said.
“People from NY and New Jersey are kind of stuck here (during bad weather), so they can still come”, if forecasts don’t play out as predicted, Khan said.
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Last week Hermine made landfall in Florida as a hurricane but was quickly downgraded to a tropical storm before churning across Georgia and the Carolinas. It has caused at least three deaths, inflicted widespread property damage and knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people from Florida to Virginia.
