SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Tropical Storm Debby has moved menacingly into some of America’s most historic Southern cities, bringing prolonged downpours and flooding Tuesday after slamming into Florida and prompting the rescue of hundreds from flooded homes.
Record-setting rain from the storm that killed at least five people in Florida and Georgia was causing flash flooding, with up to 25 inches possible in some areas, the National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory Tuesday morning.
“Hunker down,” Van Johnson, the mayor of Savannah, Georgia, told residents in a social media livestream Monday night. “Expect that it will be a rough day” on Tuesday, he said.
The storm’s center was just southwest of Savannah early Tuesday with maximum sustained winds near 45 mph and it was moving northeast at less than 6 mph.
“Tropical cyclones always produce heavy rain, but normally as they’re moving, you know, it doesn’t accumulate that much in one place,” Richard Pasch of the National Hurricane Center said Tuesday morning. “But when they move very slowly, that’s the worst situation.”
Tropical cyclones derive their energy from warm water, so Debby has weakened over land, but part of the circulation was interacting with water over the Atlantic, Pasch said. The storm’s center is expected to move out over the water off the Georgia and South Carolina coast, then move back inland, so it could restrengthen Wednesday before it moves inland Thursday over South Carolina, he said.
More than 6 inches of rain had fallen through Monday at Savannah’s airport, and showed no signs of stopping Tuesday, the National Weather Service reported. That’s already a month’s worth of rain in a single day: In all of August 2023, the city got 5.56 inches of rain.
Flash flood warnings were issued in Savannah and Charleston, South Carolina, among other areas of coastal Georgia and South Carolina. Both Savannah and Charleston announced overnight curfews as the rains picked up. Charleston County Interim Emergency Director Ben Webster called Debby a “historic and potentially unprecedented event” three times in a 90-second briefing Monday.
Charleston police barricaded all eight roads leading into the 350-year-old city built on a marshy peninsula Monday night after urging non-residents to leave, and said the curfew would remain through Tuesday, letting only essential workers and emergency personnel pass through. Charleston also opened parking garages so residents could park their cars above floodwaters and updated an online mapping system showing road closures due to flooding.
Tornadoes knocked down trees and damaged a few homes on Kiawah Island and Edisto Island between Savannah and Charleston. A Walmart, an Applebee’s and other businesses were damaged and several vehicles flipped in Moncks Corner about 30 miles inland from Charleston.
More than 10 inches of rain fell between Hilton Head Island and Charleston overnight, radar estimates showed.
At the edge of Hilton Head Island, musician Nick Poulin wasn’t overly concerned about Debby since his equipment was inside and he made sure that his car wasn’t parked under trees so it won’t be hit by falling branches.
“I’m born and raised here, so we’ve had plenty of storms,” he said. “It’s usually not as bad as people hype it up to be.”
Debby made landfall along the Gulf Coast of Florida early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane. Weakening winds made it a tropical storm again, but its slow forward movement and the ocean water it picked up caused catastrophic in places. About 500 people were rescued Monday from flooded homes in Sarasota, Florida, a beach city popular with tourists, the Sarasota Police Department announced. Just north of Sarasota, Manatee County officials said 186 people were rescued.
“Essentially we’ve had twice the amount of the rain that was predicted for us to have,” Sarasota County Fire Chief David Rathbun said on social media.
