United States: Tropical storm Debby advanced to some of America’s most historic Southern cities, flooded the state of Florida, and caused hundreds of people to be rescued from their homes. It prolonged heavy rain and floods through Tuesday.
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Heavy rain caused by the storm also resulted in the highest recorded rainfall in which at least five people were killed on Monday: four in Florida and one in Georgia, and among the deceased were two children.
President Biden cited governors of both states and South Carolina and authorized them to make emergency declarations.
Projections for Debby
The National Hurricane Center projected Debby to remain offshore of the Georgia coast by the end of Tuesday.
By 8 a.m. Tuesday of the EDT, the storm’s center had been found 20 miles southwest of Savannah in Georgia and 105 miles southwest of Charleston in South Carolina. The hurricane center identified Debby’s movements as northeast and at a speed of 9 mph with gusts of wind up to 45 mph at most.
The forecasters warned of a “major flood threat” for some areas in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina in the next few days.
CBS News senior weather and climate producer David Parkinson said Debby, which “has already slowed to a near crawl,” will slow even more as the day goes on.
According to the Miami-based center statement, “Debby is expected to produce potentially historic rainfall totals of 10 to 20 inches, with maximum amounts of 25 inches, bringing areas of catastrophic flooding across portions of southeast Georgia, the eastern half of South Carolina, and southeast North Carolina through Friday,” as the CBS News reported.
“From northern North Carolina through portions of the Mid-Atlantic States, 4 to 8 inches of rainfall, with local amounts to 12 inches, are expected through Sunday morning. This rainfall will likely result in areas of considerable flash and urban flooding, with river flooding possible,” the center added.
“On the forecast track,” forecasters continued, “the center of Debby is expected to move offshore the coast of Georgia later today, drift offshore through early Thursday, and then move inland over South Carolina on Thursday,” as it continued.
Tropical storm-force winds extended outward up to 205 miles east of the center, the center added.
Parkinson added that at 6 a.m. EDT, “Much of the low country of South Carolina has already received around a foot of rain. Some bands over the state now are bringing rain at a rate of 2-3 inches per hour. In Savannah, they’re beginning to get on the back side of the storm, so the worst rain is over, but another 3 inches or so is possible. In Charleston, however, they’re in the thick of it right now, and will see torrential rain off and on for at least the next 36 hours. That area is the best candidate for a total above 2 feet by the conclusion of the storm. There is still another 12-16 inches coming to many areas from Debby.”
Debby made landfall on the Gulf Coast in Florida early on Monday as a Category 1 hurricane. Later, it declined into a tropical storm, and practically crawling, it left many areas soaked and experiencing extreme floods.
Warnings to several states
Other areas of coastal Georgia and South Carolina, including Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, were put on flash flood warnings. Savannah and Charleston both declared curfews from Monday night through Tuesday morning.
According to Charleston County Interim Emergency Director Ben Webster, in South Carolina, Debby was called a “historic and potentially unprecedented event,” as CBS News reported.
Some 150k customers remained without power early Tuesday in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, said PowerOutage.us. Outages in the affected regions were more than 110,000 in Florida alone.
On Monday, the flight tracking website FlightAware.com reported over 1,600 flights canceled across the country, including numerous operations to and from Florida airports.
Besides a curfew, the city of Charleston’s safety plan includes sandbags for residents, opening the parking facilities so that residents can leave their automobiles above the flood level, and a system of online mapping that helps to determine which roads are closed due to the flood.
According to a warning issued by the South Carolina Emergency Management Division Director Kim Stenson, “The heavy rains and flooding currently predicted this week are historic in scope and scale. Our experts with the National Hurricane Center believe flooding to be catastrophic for many parts of South Carolina. Take no chances with this storm.”