More than 500 people were rescued from flood waters from homes and vehicles in Sarasota, Florida, on Monday, police said, and about 180 people were rescued in Manatee County, officials said.
The hurricane centre said Debby would cross Georgia and move offshore into the Atlantic Ocean by Tuesday night, then restrengthen and make a second landfall, probably in South Carolina near Charleston.
The storm was near the Florida-Georgia border late on Monday, about 35 miles (60km) west of Brunswick, Georgia, and crawling at 7mph (11kph) northeast with sustained winds of 45mph (75kph) and higher gusts, the hurricane centre said.
The centre forecast “catastrophic flooding,” with some areas along the Atlantic coast receiving 20 to 30 inches (76cm) of rain by Friday morning. The governors of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina declared states of emergency in anticipation of Debby’s damage.
By late afternoon on Monday, Debby had already dumped eight to 16 inches of rain in some parts of central Florida, according to local weather reports.
“This is going to be an event that is going to be probably here for the next five to seven days, maybe as long as 10 days, depending on how much rainfall we get,” said Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
Officials in Georgia and South Carolina braced for flooding.
“It may be the most water we’ve seen in a long while,” South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster said at a briefing. “There may be flooding in areas that never flooded in the past.”
Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said the city could expect a “once in a thousand year” rain event.
“This will literally create islands in the city,” Johnson said.
SLOW DRENCHING
A slow-moving tropical storm as it passed over Cuba, Debby gained strength from exceptionally warm Gulf waters as it paralleled Florida’s Gulf Coast on Sunday.
Debby bears some of the hallmarks of Hurricane Harvey, which hit Corpus Christi, Texas, in August 2017. Downgraded to a tropical storm as it moved inland, Harvey lingered over Texas, dumping about 50 inches of rain on Houston and causing $125 billion in damage.
Climate scientists believe man-made global warming from burning fossil fuels has raised the temperature of the oceans, making storms bigger and more devastating.
The last hurricane to make a direct hit on the Big Bend region was Hurricane Idalia, which briefly gained Category 4 strength before making landfall as a Category 3 in August 2023, with winds of more than 125mph. The National Centers for Environmental Information estimated $3.5 billion in damages. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis described the initial effects of Debby as “modest” compared with Idalia.
Forecasters expect numerous Atlantic hurricanes in the 2024 season, which began on June 1, including four to seven major ones. That would exceed the record-breaking 2005 season that spawned the devastating Katrina and Rita hurricanes.
Only one other hurricane, Beryl, has formed in the Atlantic this year. The earliest Category 5 storm on record, it struck the Caribbean and Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula before rolling up the Gulf Coast of Texas as a Category 1 storm, with sustained winds up to 95mph.
Reuters