Hurricane Debby strengthened overnight, making landfall as a Category 1 storm Monday around 7 a.m. in Florida’s Big Bend area.
The storm, which recorded maximum sustained winds of 80 mph, made landfall just west of Steinhatchee and 70 miles southeast of Tallahassee, CBS News reported.
A hurricane warning is in effect from just southeast of Panama City to about 60 miles north of Tampa, The Washington Post reported.
Debby brings with it the potential for record-setting rains, catastrophic flooding and life-threatening storm surge as it moves slowly across the northern part of the state. After this, it’s expected to stall over the coastal regions of Georgia and South Carolina, which could see as much as 30 inches of rain.
“I think what’s going to make this much different than what we had with Idalia is it is going to move very slowly once it enters Florida — it’s going to be southern Georgia, northern Florida — and it is just going to drop an inordinate amount of water on the north-central Florida region,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told FOX Weather on Sunday.
Mandatory evacuation orders were in place for Alachua, Citrus, Levy, Dixie, Franklin, Taylor and Wakulla counties as of Sunday evening. Voluntary orders had been issued for Clay, Gadsden, Hamilton, Hernando, Jefferson, Lafayette, Madison, Pasco and Union counties.
As the storm made its way toward northern Florida Sunday, Debby’s outer bands brought heavy rains, flooding, gusty winds and reports of tornadoes to the state’s peninsula.
About 8:30 a.m. Monday, there were 256,837 Florida utility customers statewide without power, with more than 25,000 customers in Pinellas County offline, according to PowerOutage.US.
Other counties with major outage numbers are Sarasota with 11,748, Hillsborough with 9,972, Taylor with 13,698, Suwannee with 20,680, and Levy with 10,342 customers out.
As Debby makes landfall, “we will restore power to our customers affected by the storm as soon as it is safe to do so,” Florida Power & Light posted to X, formerly Twitter.
DeSantis said Monday morning that 17,000 linemen have been mobilized to help restore power in the state and that Starlink internet could be deployed if necessary, reports said.
“In my nearly 35 years at (the station,) Debby is high on the list of impactful storms. And all of this from a tropical storm that passed 70+ miles west of us,” Fox 13 meteorologist Paul Dellegatto wrote in a Facebook post, adding, “We say it all the time, but this storm is the poster child for, you don’t need a big hurricane to cause huge problems. The wind speed and the category of storm always makes the headlines, but it’s the water that causes the biggest problems.”
Even as the hurricane moves north, heavy rains are expected to continue along the west coast Monday. Much of the state remains under a tornado and tropical storm advisories.
Storm surge advisories also remain in effect for coastal counties along the west coast, from Englewood to Indian Pass, including Tampa Bay, according to WESH.
DeSantis declared a state of emergency for 61 of Florida’s 67 counties, with the National Guard activating 3,000 guard members.
The governor said that, for the first time, constructed flood control devices are being placed at utility stations to try to minimize the risk of power interruptions because of flooding.