At least five people have been killed after Hurricane Debby slammed into Florida before weakening to a tropical storm. Debby is expected to bring heavy flooding to parts of Georgia and the Carolinas in the coming days. The National Hurricane Center warned of a “life-threatening” flood threat as the “slow-moving storm” drops “torrential rains.” Debby made landfall on Monday morning as a category one hurricane in the Big Bend region of Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Authorities reported that the deceased included a 13-year-old boy who was killed when a tree fell onto a mobile home in Levy County, near Gainesville. In Hillsborough County, an 18-wheel lorry veered into a canal during the storm, with the driver found dead. In Dixie County, just west of Gainesville, a woman and a 12-year-old were killed when their car crashed on Sunday night. In southern Georgia, a 19-year-old died after a large tree fell onto a porch at a home in Moultrie.
The slow-moving pace of the storm could bring “catastrophic flooding,” according to Jamie Rhome, the deputy director of the hurricane center. Debby’s waves and strong winds also blew 25 packages of cocaine, worth more than $1 million, ashore in the Florida Keys, according to the US Border Patrol.
In Florida, some 150,000 homes and businesses were without power on Monday night. Another 36,000 residents in Georgia and South Carolina were experiencing outages. The storm is forecast to skim the coast, drenching southeast Georgia and the Carolinas on Tuesday and Wednesday, before moving inland near the South Carolina coast on Thursday.
Before the storm made landfall, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for 61 of Florida’s 67 counties.
Spyridon Aibejeris said that repairs on his Keaton Beach home had just wrapped up two weeks ago from Hurricane Idalia, a category three storm that made landfall last summer. “Man, I’ve done this so many times,” Mr. Aibejeris said.
Forecasters predicted this hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30, would be a busy one. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said there could be up to 25 named storms in 2024, with between 8 and 13 potentially developing into hurricanes. Debby was the fourth named storm of the year.
It is thought that climate change may be making slow-moving hurricanes like this more likely. As the world heats unevenly, changes in atmospheric circulations that steer storms across the planet become more frequent, contributing to the development of such storms.
Melissa Enoch
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