Georgia declares state of emergency as Tropical Storm Debby causes flooding, heavy winds

Over the weekend tropical storm Debby gained momentum from bathtub-like-water surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico near the Big Bend of Florida.

“Sunday afternoon the storm started to rapidly intensify,” Alex DaSilva, lead hurricane expert at AccuWeather said. “Tropical storms need 80 degrees to survive, and we’re several degrees above normal even for August.”

The Eastern Gulf Coast waters are between 82 to 89 degrees, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration.

That’s why Debby became a hurricane, just before making landfall, DaSilva said.

Four days ago, tropical storm Debby was an undeveloped storm system over the Caribbean islands.

“Research shows with a warming planet, it is more likely that storms will exhibit rapid intensification,” DaSilva said. “The conclusions have not been made that there will be more storms but the storms that do form are more likely to rapidly intensify. We saw that with Beryl and this storm went under rapid intensification.”

DaSilva is confident that if the hurricane had been in the Gulf for just a few more hours before it hit Florida it would have been a Category 2 hurricane and thanks to the Ohio Valley jetstream and dry air on the western side of the storm, it remained at Category 1.

Residents in Perry, Florida and the Big Bend coastal cities experienced sustained winds of 75 mph Monday morning.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for his state, which allows assistance to be deployed more quickly. As of July 1, climate change will be erased from legislation in Florida from DeSantis’, striking climate change from existing laws.

Georgia state of emergency, power outages

Governor Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency for all 159 counties in Georgia on Sunday.

The southern counties that border Florida and along the Georgia coast are under tropical storm advisories, flood watches, and hurricane watches.

Valdosta, Georgia was hit hard by Hurricane Idalia almost exactly a year ago, with serious damage from winds nearing 70 mph.

Lowndes County Sheriff, Ashley Paulk said they are experiencing winds at 35 mph and trees are already down, but no major damage has occurred. Paulk said they will have staggered shifts with extra staff of about 70-90 people over the next 24 hours.

“We’ve got chainsaws ready for trees,” Paulk said.

From 8:30 am to 11 a.m., Valdosta, Georgia went from a few hundred to 10,000 reports of power outages, according to Georgia Power’s outage map.

Reports from the National Hurricane Center of winds at 80 mph inland near the Florida and Georgia border. The National Hurricane Center expects the hurricane to move slowly over the two states until it reaches the coast again.

The winds are forecast to go through Southern and coastal Georgia at 30-50 mph, DaSilva said, and head into the 60-80 mph in the coastal Carolinas on Tuesday.