As of Wednesday evening, Hermine has gradually strengthened with winds of 45 miles per hour and made that turn toward the panhandle of Florida.
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The order included the state capital Tallahassee and home to tens of thousands of state workers.
It would be the state’s first hit from a hurricane since Wilma in October 2005, a record storm-free streak.
WTNH News 8 Meteorologist Gil Simmons said rain is also expected Thursday. City crews were struggling to keep up with demand for sand with sandbags.
The Miami-based center says a hurricane hunter plane has determined that a tropical depression strengthened Wednesday into the named storm and Hermine now boasts top sustained winds of 40 miles per hour.
Tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 125 miles from the center, mainly to the east and southeast.
The almost 11 years since Florida last saw a hurricane make landfall is an unprecedented tropical cyclone drought in historic record.
Storm surge warnings were issued for much of the region, with water levels predicted to reach up to seven feet in some areas of the Panhandle and up to three feet in Tampa Bay. He said he was mostly anxious about the new equipment he’d recently purchased for the waterfront restaurant.
Hermine, which formed Wednesday, is expected to strengthen and come ashore as early as Thursday night as a hurricane, the NHC said early Thursday.
Flooding is expected across a wide swath of the Big Bend area, which has a mostly marshy coastline.
“If you think you might need to go to a shelter know where a shelter is”, he says.
In South Carolina, Friday night lights will be Thursday night lights in many areas. By early Friday morning, Hermine should spread north and eastward into SC. Forecasters downgraded Madeline from a hurricane to a tropical storm as it veered past Hawaii’s Big Island, but officials reiterated warnings to prepare for heavy rain and strong winds. “Some strengthening is still possible, and the depression could become a tropical storm tomorrow before losing tropical characteristics on Friday”. Unfortunately, Hermine, as of now, will have enough of an impact on Sunday and Mondays weather that it will be mostly cloudy both days and a chance of showers Sunday afternoon and evening, especially the closer to the coast you are in CT.
Severe weather, including the risk for tornadoes, exists to the east of where the center of the storm reaches land.
The storm should head northeast through northern Florida tonight, and into Georgia by late Thursday night. Residents in other low-lying areas prone to flooding were also being asked to flee. Tropical storm warnings and hurricane watches extended north of Tampa to the Panhandle and as far north as Charleston.
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The National Weather Service has issued tropical storm watches and warnings for our southern beaches and a flash flood watch for Robeson and Bladen counties Friday through Saturday morning.
