While most of the attention on the budding tropical storm swirling off Cuba on Saturday is on the expected impacts to Florida this weekend, several signs point to the storm having a second life off the southeastern US coast, bringing a renewed threat of flooding rains, damaging wind and dangerous storm surge.
What will likely become Tropical Storm Debby later Saturday is forecast to eventually make landfall along the northwestern coast of Florida later Sunday or early Monday as a strong tropical storm or low-end hurricane.
Once the storm moves inland into northern Florida, there is uncertainty about the storm’s next chapter.
Weakening steering currents will cause the storm to slow down over northern Florida.
“Every single computer model shows a trend of this storm slowing down dramatically,” FOX Weather Meteorologist Britta Merwin said.
Current projections have the storm eventually drifting along the southeastern US coastline through the middle of the week — if not longer — with possible paths pushing the storm back over the Atlantic.
“If we have a tropical storm emerge over the Atlantic, we have a very warm channel of water called the Gulf Stream,” Merwin said. “And if the storm sets up right over it, it will be able to feed off of that warm water, and slow down, and just continue to pummel the Carolinas. It will also have enough heat content to possibly be a hurricane at that point.”
A potentially rejuvenated Debby would bring a dangerous mix of days of heavy rains, strong wind and even feet of storm surge along the coast of Georgia and the Carolinas, with a chance of a second landfall as a tropical storm or hurricane.
“There’s a possibility that this storm stalls offshore and that’s really the worst case scenario, but that’s a worst case scenario that you need to be prepared for,” Merwin said. “Any time you see a forecast (cone) that looks like a big old fishbowl, that means two things: a slowing storm or a stalled out storm. Both just equal a long duration of heavy rain, wind and unfortunately, if you have a storm stalling offshore, that means it could be strengthening and sitting offshore.”
The National Hurricane Center is warning of potential rainfall totals of 5-10 inches by mid-week with some spots getting as much as 15 inches of rain.
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“We could see really heavy rainfall totals along portions of the coastal Southeast, places like Savannah, Hilton Head, Charleston and up to southern North Carolina,” National Hurricane Director Michael Brennan told FOX Weather.
The flash flooding risk Monday from locations like Jacksonville up to Myrtle Beach are at Level 3 out of 4 on NOAA’s Flash Flood risk scale.
“This is the area of greatest concern where we can see that really heavy rainfall unfold,” he said.
It’s too early to determine storm surge potential or how strong winds will be circling an eye wall, but as Florida takes the headlines this weekend, those along the coasts of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia should start preparing for the possibility of tropical storm or hurricane conditions early next week.