(Bloomberg) -- Florida’s Big Bend coast is under a hurricane warning for as soon as late Sunday night as the storm moving across the Gulf of Mexico has strengthened into Tropical Storm Debby.
“Hurricane conditions are expected in the hurricane warning area by late Sunday night or Monday morning, with tropical storm conditions expected to arrive during the day on Sunday,” Jack Beven, a senior hurricane specialist with the US National Hurricane Center, wrote in a forecast Saturday.
In addition to the hurricane warning for the area between the Suwannee and Ochlockonee rivers near Florida’s Gulf Coast, the center has issued a less-severe hurricane watch for areas to the east and west, as well as storm surge watches and warnings.
Tropical Storm Debby was about 70 miles (115 kilometers) northwest of Havana as of 5 p.m. Saturday, New York time. Maximum sustained winds are running at about 40 miles per hour, with higher gusts.
“There is no real hindrance for development,” Matt Rinde, a meteorologist with the commercial forecaster AccuWeather Inc., said earlier Saturday. “That water is extremely warm; it is well above average for this time of year. It is going to have a great opportunity to strengthen in there as it goes northward.”
President Joe Biden has been briefed on the storm, and federal emergency officials have prepositioned resources, including water and meals, the White House said.
While the storm would likely touch off power outages across Florida and the South, it’s tracking too far east to affect offshore oil and natural gas operations in the western Gulf of Mexico, sparing energy markets any great shock. Debby is the fourth storm of the season, which is expected to be one of the most active on record because of the Atlantic’s heat.
Warm ocean water acts as kindling for storms. Beryl exploded into the earliest Category 5 hurricane seen in the Atlantic when it ripped across the Caribbean before finally making landfall in Texas in July.
Rinde said AccuWeather believes Debby may reach Category 1 strength on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale when it makes landfall late Sunday or early Monday in Florida. The big wrinkle is what happens after that, since some outlooks suggest the storm will pass across the US Southeast and then get stuck off the South Carolina coast, where it would bring days of heavy rain to the region.
In addition to high winds, Debby would likely drop upward of 15 inches (38 cm) of rain in parts of Florida and across the Southeast, as well as pushing a storm surge of as much as 5 feet (1.5 meters) into the coast line, the hurricane center said.
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