Hurricane Debby made landfall in Steinhatchee, Florida on Monday morning (August 5, 2024) as a category one storm – packing maximum sustained winds of eighty miles per hour.
Located in the Big Bend region of Florida approximately 70 miles west of Gainesville, Steinhatchee is a popular vacation destination for anglers. As fate would have it, the town is located a mere ten miles southeast from the spot where Hurricane Idalia made landfall last August.
The eye of Debby moved ashore at approximately 7:00 a.m. EDT – less than 72 hours after the system first formed just north of Cuba on Friday.
Florida-based weather expert Mike Boylan – who was one of the first to project Debby would attain hurricane strength prior to landfall – was in Steinhatchee as the storm moved ashore.
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In the eyewall. Steinhatchee. Streaming live. pic.twitter.com/4Rpv8cjggQ
— Mike's Weather Page (@tropicalupdate) August 5, 2024
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While Debby lacked Idalia’s punch, its projected path is likely to make it a far more dangerous – and costly – system.
“On the forecast track, the center will slowly across northern Florida and southern Georgia today and Tuesday, and be near the Georgia coast by Tuesday night,” forecasters with the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami, Florida noted.
Our media outlet has been tracking Debby from the beginning as it transitioned from wave to depression to tropical storm… and now to the second hurricane of 2024.
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As we noted in our initial coverage, Debby has been projected all along to “curl back toward the eastern seaboard after its anticipated trek through the Gulf of Mexico.”
“Corresponding rainfall projections are … looking ominous for South Carolina’s coastline,” I wrote on Friday.
Based on the latest NHC advisory, “ominous” would be putting it mildly. As you can see from the map below, Debby has the potential to bring with it the worst flooding South Carolina has seen in nearly a decade.
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“Across portions of southeast Georgia, the coastal plain of South Carolina, and southeast North Carolina, 10 to 20 inches of rainfall, with local amounts to 30 inches, are expected through Saturday morning,” the latest advisory noted. “This potentially historic rainfall will likely result in areas of catastrophic flooding.”
Assuming those projections hold, Debby’s deluge could rival 2015’s ‘Floodmageddon’ – a natural disaster that killed more than a dozen people and exposed glaring weaknesses in the Palmetto State’s infrastructure.
Even worse? Charleston, S.C. – which is historically prone to flooding – is at the epicenter of the anticipated multi-day downpour.
According to the S.C. Emergency Management Division (SCEMD), Debby is “expected to move very slowly over South Carolina in the next few days, leading to potentially historic heavy rainfall.”
The agency further noted that as of the latest advisory, “projected rainfall totals for South Carolina have increased.”
Once again, count on this media outlet to keep our audience advised as to the latest developments related to this system and its potential impact on the Palmetto State. For more information on Debby and other developments in the tropics, be sure to check out our new weather page.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Will Folks is the owner and founding editor of FITSNews. Prior to founding his own news outlet, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina, bass guitarist in an alternative rock band and bouncer at a Columbia, S.C. dive bar. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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