Residents on Florida’s Gulf coast filled sandbags, schools closed early and graduation ceremonies were postponed as Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency with Tropical Storm Colin churning toward the state Monday, threatening serious flooding.
The National Hurricane Center said Colin marked the earliest that a third named storm has evr formed in the Atlantic basin.
A large portion of Florida’s western and Panhandle coast was already under a tropical storm warning when the National Hurricane Center announced that a swift-moving depression had become a named storm. The center said it is the earliest that a third named storm has ever formed in the Atlantic basin.
Colin’s maximum sustained winds Monday were near 50 mph with some slow strengthening possible during the next two days.
The storm was centered about 245 miles west of Tampa and moving north-northeast near 17 mph.
The latest forecast for Colin called for the storm to make landfall near the Big Bend area of Florida in the mid-afternoon, move across the Florida peninsula into Georgia and then move along or just off the South Carolina coast before heading out to sea.
Schools in at least one Florida Gulf Coast county planned to dismiss students early Monday. Pasco County, which had passed out about 20,000 sandbags so far, said schools would be letting out, and it was likely that county government would shut down around noon to get people off the road by 3 p.m.
In addition, two high school graduations in the Tampa Bay area were postponed due to the storms.
Colin is expected to produce rainfall amounts of 3 to 5 inches, and forecasters said up to 8 inches are possible across western Florida, eastern Georgia and coastal areas of the Carolinas through today.
Forecasters also described Colin as a lopsided storm, with tropical storm-force winds extending up to 185 miles east of its center.
Not everyone in Florida was hunkering down. About 50 people were in the water with surfboards off Treasure Island to take advantage of the rare 2 to 3-foot swells breaking in the Gulf’s warm waters.
Meanwhile, Scott postponed a political meeting with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump scheduled Monday in New York so he can remain in the state capital to monitor the weather.
Scott warned residents not to simply look at the center of the storm, saying the heaviest rain will be to the east and west of it.