Hurricane Debby Hits FL, Could Bring Historic Flooding to Southeast
Hurricane Debby made landfall on Florida’s Big Bend coast this morning as a Category 1 storm.
The major fear is not so much her winds but the possibility for huge amounts of rain along with a storm surge of potentially 6 to 10 feet.
Those living in low-lying areas were urged to evacuate.
One Florida resident said, “Now we’ve got four to six inches coming, and I’m just not sure where it’s going to go.” Another said, “We have a low-lying bedroom and when it gets heavy rain it comes underneath the door.” Debby is expected to move slowly across Florida, dropping up to a foot of rain.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has declared a state of emergency, activating as many as 3,000 Florida National Guard troops to help during the storm. DeSantis warned residents of his state, “There may be immediate impacts that you see, but you could also see flooding that happens days afterwards. After the storm passes, do not go into floodwaters; there could be dangerous debris. There could be downed power lines. And please do not drive your vehicles through flooded streets.”
The National Hurricane Center expects Debby to reach Georgia by tonight, and then South Carolina. Both are already under states of emergency, facing anywhere from 10 to 30 inches of rainfall by the end of the week. Chris Stallings, Director of the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency, said of the huge expected rainfall, “If so, that will be a generational storm that we’ve not seen. They’re calling it a 500- to 1,000-year storm.
Emergency managers in New England and New York are also monitoring the path of the storm with ground already saturated from heavy rain and thunderstorms in recent weeks.
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