By Maria Alejandra Cardona
STEINHATCHEE, Fla. (Reuters) -Storm Debby made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane in the Big Bend region of Florida on Monday morning and began a slow crawl toward the Atlantic Coast, on track to unleash a week of torrential rain and catastrophic flooding across the U.S. Southeast.
The hurricane slammed ashore around 7 a.m. near Steinhatchee, Florida, about 70 miles (115 km) southeast of Tallahassee, delivering winds of up to 80 mph (130 kph), the National Hurricane Center said. It had weakened to a tropical storm by mid-morning.
Debby had already dumped up to a foot of rain in some parts of the state’s southwest, Florida Division of Emergency Management Executive Director Kevin Guthrie said.
Hours after the storm’s landfall in Steinhatchee, heavy rains were still falling on the beach town, and bayfront restaurants were flooded.
At least one person was dead in Hillsborough County, as rescue crews in Tampa recovered the body of an 18-wheeler truck driver who had lost control of the vehicle on Interstate 75 and went into the Tampa Bypass Canal, local TV station WTSP reported.
The hurricane center predicted Debby would move offshore into the Atlantic by Tuesday night, but then re-strengthen and come back inland to unleash torrential rains on the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina later in the week.
The center forecast “catastrophic flooding,” with local areas from Florida to southeastern North Carolina receiving more than two feet of rain by Friday morning.
“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,” Guthrie said.
Roughly 280,000 customers were without power in Florida, according to Poweroutage.us.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the state had been approved for federal disaster assistance on Sunday and that 17,000 workers were on hand to restore power.
Hundreds of flights were canceled at Florida airports on Monday. Tallahassee International Airport said on X that it closed at midnight and would reopen at noon on Monday if it were safe to do so.
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.
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 125 mph. The National Centers for Environmental Information estimated $3.5 billion in damages. 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 hurricane, Beryl, has yet 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 95 mph.