Storms & Hurricanes |

Tropical Storm Debby brings ‘torrential rains’ while slowly moving across Georgia

Tropical Storm Debby will continue to pose a major flooding threat for the southeastern United States in the coming days after lashing Florida’s northwest coast, contributing to at least four deaths in the state.

Debby came ashore at 7 a.m. Monday as a Category 1 hurricane with 80 mph winds, just north of the tiny coastal town of Steinhatchee, in a sparsely populated section of the Big Bend region. It moved slowly across northern Florida into southeastern Georgia and is forecast to move off the coast of South Caroline by late Tuesday and Wednesday, then approach the state’s coast on Thursday.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned that just because the storm is moving into Georgia, it doesn’t mean the state won’t continue to see threats as waterways north of the border fill up and flow south.

“It is a very saturating, wet storm,” he said during an afternoon briefing at the state’s emergency operations center. “When they crest and the water that’s going to come down from Georgia, it’s just something that we’re going to be on alert for not just throughout today, but for the next week.”

About 500 people were rescued from flooded homes in Sarasota, the Sarasota Police Department said Monday in a social media post.

“Essentially we’ve had twice the amount of the rain that was predicted for us to have,” Sarasota County Fire Chief David Rathbun said in a social media update.

Officials in Manatee County said in a news release that 186 people were rescued from flood waters.

The Levy County Sheriff’s Department in Florida reported that a 13-year-old boy was killed in a storm-related incident Monday morning when a large tree fell on a mobile home in Fanning Springs, about 40 miles east of where the storm made landfall.

A truck driver, a 64-year-old man, died on Interstate 75 in the Tampa area after he lost control of his tractor trailer, which flipped over a concrete wall and dangled over water before the cab dropped into the water below. In Dixie County, a 38-year-old woman and a 12-year-old boy died in a car crash on wet roads Sunday night. The Florida Highway Patrol said a 14-year-old boy who was a passenger was hospitalized with serious injuries.

A fifth Debby-related death was reported in south Georgia, where a 19-year-old man was killed when a tree fell onto a porch.

Images posted on social media by Cedar Key Fire Rescue early Monday showed floodwaters rising along the streets of the city, south of where the storm made landfall. Water was “coming in at a pretty heavy pace,” the post said. Nearly 200,000 customers remained without power in Florida and Georgia on Monday night, down from a peak of more than 350,000, according to PowerOutage.us and Georgia Electric Membership Corp.

Between Saturday morning and Monday morning, South Florida recorded maximum wind speeds ranging from 20 mph up to 53 mph associated with Debby, according to the National Weather Service Miami’s preliminary data. Rainfall totals ranged from just over an inch to as much as about 4 inches in South Florida.

As of 8 p.m. Monday, Debby was located about 50 miles east of Valdosta, Georgia. The storm was moving northeast at 6 mph with maximum sustained winds of 45 mph. Tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 140 miles from the center.

Facing ‘record-breaking’ rainfall

Debby’s slow movement is expected to cause “extremely large amounts” of rain over the southeastern states, NHC forecasters said.

Flash and urban flooding across portions of northern Florida could last through Friday morning and “historic rainfall” could flood parts of Georgia to North Carolina through the middle of the week, forecasters said.

The National Weather Service is forecasting 12 to 16 inches of rain in areas east of Tallahassee, 16 to 20 inches around Savannah, Georgia, and 20 to 30 inches south of Charleston, South Carolina.

“This potentially historic rainfall will likely result in areas of catastrophic flooding,” the hurricane center said Monday night.

The National Hurricane Center is forecasting 4 to 6 feet of storm surge along the Georgia and South Carolina coast as well, making for a potent flooding mix.

If Debby stalls over the coastal regions of Georgia and South Carolina, the area could get record-setting rain of up to 30 inches beginning Tuesday.

“There’s some really amazing rainfall totals being forecast and amazing in a bad way,” Michael Brennan, director of the hurricane center, said at a briefing. “That would be record-breaking rainfall associated with a tropical cyclone for both the states of Georgia and South Carolina if we got up to the 30-inch level.”

Officials in Savannah said the area could see a month’s worth of rain in four days if the system stalls over the region.

It’s going to be “a significant storm. The word historic cannot be underscored here,” Savannah Mayor Van. R. Johnson said during a news conference.

MAP: Here’s the latest forecast track of Hurricane Debby

Meanwhile, forecasters are also watching a disorganized tropical wave located north of Suriname and a few hundred miles to the east of the Windward Islands in the Atlantic that is headed toward the central and western Caribbean later this week. The environment in the western Caribbean Sea or the southern Gulf of Mexico where it could move later this week is more favorable for it to develop, the hurricane center said.

As of Tuesday, it was given a 10% chance of formation in the next 48 hours and 30% within the next seven days.

The next storm to form would be named Ernesto. Hurricane Beryl, the earliest recorded Category 5 ever in a hurricane season, killed dozens as it swept through the Caribbean, Mexico and Texas in late June and early July.

Earlier in July, Colorado State University experts updated their hurricane season forecast, calling for an even busier season than the already “extremely active” forecast they earlier predicted.

Staff writers Robin Webb and Victoria Ballard contributed to this report. Information from The Associated Press was used to supplement this news article.