Colin was expected to pass the Georgia coast before dawn Tuesday, said Dennis Jones, director of the Chatham County Emergency Management Agency.
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Tropical Storm Colin moved fast after making landfall in northwestern Florida on June 6 and by the morning of June 7, 2016 it was centered off the coast of North and SC.
Scott said in an interview that there were no reports of major damage, but the state will be tracking flooding from the sudden deluge of rain, much of which fell during high tides Monday. It’s the earliest that three named storms have hit the region, besting the previous record – which was set in 1887 – by about a week.
Colin, which formed Sunday in the Gulf of Mexico, is expected to cross the southern state with maximum sustained winds reaching 50 miles (85 kilometers) per hour, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Monday. The state also has a 250-person team responding to road closures and directing traffic during power outages.
“It’s going to impact pretty much our entire state”, Scott said at the state Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee.
Radar mosaics and satellite loops show that the rain shield associated with Colin is substantially less robust and moving off faster to the east than earlier anticipated.
The Georgia coast and the north Florida Atlantic coast were placed under a tropical storm watch Monday morning.
Tropical Storm Colin continues to move away from the southeastern coast of the United States, but not before dumping heavy rain along North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
As of 7 a.m. ET, the center of the storm was located about 315 miles west-southwest of Tampa and was moving to the north-northeast at 15 mph, the hurricane center said. Parts of Pinellas County on the Gulf Coast, saw nine inches of rain, while other areas, from Levy to Sarasota counties, received one to six inches of rain in a 24-hour period, the National Weather Service said Tuesday. Colin is forecast to move out to sea on a northeastward trajectory, becoming post-tropical early Wednesday, according to the hurricane center in Miami.
“What it sounds like is just some heavy rains, but nothing torrential, not high winds”, Giese said.
That will keep the system well off the SC coast.
Besides preparing for Tropical Storm Colin and hurricane season, Florida Gov. Rick Scott is also trying to combat a further outbreak of the Zika virus.
Colin is part of a brisk start to the Atlantic hurricane season that runs through November 30.
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“The system has strengthened a little bit”, said Will Ulrich, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Melbourne, said early Monday.
