Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency for 51 counties as residents braced for the unsafe storm. the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said wind gusts reached 110 kmph yesterday.
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Pennsylvania, Delaware and New England are expected to get their share Saturday into Sunday. Injuries were reported in Tallahassee as trees fell onto homes. As of early Friday, the 110-mph hurricane was still 480 miles from Hilo, Hawaii, but was moving to the west-northwest at 14 mph, according to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. “According to the National Weather Service, we can see some of the most intense rip tides literally in 10, 15 years”.
The city said at 4:30 a.m. on Twitter that it had dispatched electric crews to restore power to the more than 60,000 customers still without it.
Georgia and southern North Carolina will face coastal flooding concerns, while Hermine’s deep fetch of tropical moisture along its eastern and southern flanks could bring bands of heavy rain over the Florida peninsula.
Hurricane Hermine weakened into a tropical storm after making landfall in Florida early Friday morning. The governor warned people Hermine would be life-threatening, and it also poses a Labor Day weekend threat to states along the northern Atlantic Coast that are home to tens of millions of people.
When it swirled ashore in Florida, the storm ended a “drought”: The state had gone almost 11 years without a hurricane making landfall.
The Miami-based National Hurricane Center predicted life-threatening surges and flooding rains.
The National Hurricane Center expects Hermine to produce “a large extent of unsafe winds, life-threatening storm surge and flooding rains well to the east and southeast of the path of the center”.
Pasco County fire rescue and sheriff’s deputies used high road clearance vehicles to rescue people from rising water. Wilma made landfall in southern Florida in 2005 as a Category 3 hurricane with winds of 120 miles per hour.
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Scott declared a state of emergency in 51 of Florida’s 67 counties, and at least 20 counties closed schools. He said 6,000 National Guardsmen were poised to mobilise for the storm’s aftermath.
