The governor of Florida declared a state of emergency on Thursday as a tropical system moved toward the Gulf of Mexico, threatening to bring heavy rain, gusty winds and the potential for flash flooding.
Known currently as Invest 97L, the storm could become Debby if it organizes itself into an official tropical storm. (“Invest” is meteorological shorthand for “investigative area.”)
The U.S. National Weather Service warned that heavy rains could cause areas of flash flooding across Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas through the weekend.
Florida braces for what could be a ‘major disaster.’
With heavy rainfall of at least 12 inches expected over the next seven days, Florida is bracing for the threat of flooding, along with gusty winds and erosion. On Thursday night, Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in more than 50 counties, which gives emergency managers the authority to allocate resources to respond to the fallout of the extreme weather.
The order covers Orange County and Osceola County, and travel could be disrupted for the throngs of summer visitors who go to Orlando and the theme parks at Universal Studios Florida and Walt Disney World.
Water tables in some areas are already saturated, the governor said, and the incoming rainfall “will cause significant river flooding that may last for several weeks.” The storm could damage “major interstates and roadways, bridges, airports, schools, hospitals, power grids and other critical infrastructure,” Mr. DeSantis said. It was expected to also cause widespread power outages from downed trees and power lines.
The National Hurricane Center said that an aircraft would investigate the storm on Friday if needed, and it warned officials in Cuba and the Bahamas to monitor its progress.
There is a lot of uncertainty in the forecast.
The cluster of storms was over Cuba on Friday morning and will move over the Straits of Florida late in the day into Saturday, and over the eastern Gulf of Mexico on Saturday. Over water, the thunderstorms are expected to organize into a tropical depression and will most likely become a named storm before making landfall sometime late Sunday into early Monday.
Forecasters in Tallahassee warned that landfall could occur anywhere from Apalachicola to the Tampa Bay area. The farther north the storm gets before it makes landfall, the more opportunity it has to strengthen, and a hurricane is not out of the question. When a storm system’s wind speeds reach 39 miles per hour, it becomes a tropical storm and is given a name. At 74 m.p.h., it becomes a hurricane.
Whether the storm becomes a hurricane or even gets a name, three to five inches of rain are expected to fall across Florida in a short amount of time, posing a risk for flash flooding. Higher amounts are possible in some areas, depending on where the storm system tracks and evolves through the weekend. The heaviest rain will fall to the right of the storm’s path.
After landfall, the storm will most likely move across Florida and emerge back over the Atlantic, slowly skirting up the East Coast along Georgia and the Carolinas. That is the likeliest scenario, but the forecast is unclear beyond Sunday.
There is significant uncertainty in this storm’s forecast. It may miss its exit ramp to the north and remain in the Gulf of Mexico, although this is no longer the most likely scenario. It is slightly more likely that after pounding the shores of the southeastern Atlantic coast with tropical rain and dangerous surf through most of next week, the storm will wander off into the open ocean. Or it could curve back toward the Carolinas, making another landfall. Forecasters expect much more clarity in the coming days, once they see what the storm does in the Gulf.
This hurricane season is expected to be busy.
There have been three named storms so far this season. Alberto made landfall on the northeastern coast of Mexico as a tropical storm on June 20, unleashing heavy rain, flooding and gusty winds. At least four people died in events related to the storm.
Beryl formed a little over a week later and became the earliest Category 5 hurricane on record. It carved a path of destruction through the Caribbean before crossing into the Gulf of Mexico and hitting the Texas coast. Also in July, Tropical Storm Chris formed just before making landfall, in Mexico.
Forecasters have warned that the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season could be much more active than usual.
In late May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted 17 to 25 named storms this year, an “above-normal” number and a prediction in line with more than a dozen forecasts earlier in the year from experts at universities, private companies and government agencies. Hurricane seasons produce 14 named storms, on average.
The seasonal hurricane outlooks were notably aggressive because forecasters looking at the start of the season saw a combination of circumstances that didn’t exist in records dating back to the mid-1800s: record warm water temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean and the potential formation of the weather pattern known as La Niña.
La Niña occurs in the Pacific because of changing ocean temperatures, and it affects weather patterns globally. When it is strong, it typically provides a calm environment in the Atlantic; this allows storms to develop more easily and to strengthen without interference from wind patterns that might otherwise keep them from organizing.
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