Hermine breaks unprecedented hurricane drought

Packing 80-mph winds, the category 1 Hurricane Hermine made landfall east of St. Marks early Friday morning, marking the first Florida landfall since Wilma in 2005.

The National Hurricane Center said the official landfall came at 1:30 a.m. Forecasters are warning of the possibility of a life-threatening storm surge and flooding from heavy rains from the storm.

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At 2 a.m., Hermine was centered about 35 miles southeast of Tallahassee and was moving north-northeast near 14 mph. The hurricane is expected to weaken to a tropical storm before hitting Georgia and the Carolinas, then heading up the East Coast with the potential for heavy rain and deadly flooding.

Hurricane Hermine teased and taunted its way to Florida, challenging forecasts until the suspenseful final hours before landfall when history was made.

See the latest photos from Hurricane Hermine’s path

It ended an unprecedented era of hurricane-free years for Florida that followed Hurricane Wilma’s buzz saw through the state on Oct. 24, 2005.

Hermine, which intensified quickly Thursday from a muscle-bound tropical storm to a weak hurricane, triggered mandatory evacuations of coastal areas in five counties as officials feared a storm surge of up to 9 feet.

Check The Palm Beach Post’s interactive tracking map. 

Gov. Rick Scott urged people to heed evacuation orders, which included Wakulla, Taylor, Dixie, Levy and Franklin counties, and painted a grim picture of what would happen overnight.

“This hurricane is life-threatening,” said Scott, who declared a state of emergency in 51 Florida counties. “We will have flooding, storm surge, winds of 70 to 75 mph, rain of 5 to 10 inches, and there is a significant risk of tornadoes.”

Florida’s Gulf Coast is particularly vulnerable to surge as the ocean bottom slopes gently to dry ground, giving pounding waves no outlet but onto land and up rivers and estuaries.

New National Hurricane Center storm surge maps used for the first time with Hermine show a worst-case scenario of more than 6 feet of surge pushing 20 miles up the Suwanee River.

“The water there is so shallow, it builds up and builds up and builds up and can’t escape,” said Stephen Leatherman, a professor in Florida International University’s Earth and Environment department. “Fortunately, it’s only a Cat 1 storm, but storm surge can be enough to drown you.”

Across Florida’s Big Bend, many residents and business owners took Hurricane Hermine in stride — but also conceded they were worried, as sheets of rain intensified and the wind picked up toward evening Thursday.

Some reflected on the last time the region was socked by a storm. It was Hurricane Dennis in 2005, which caused widespread destruction when high winds propelled gulf water miles inland, across marshy lowlands and into homes and stores.

“What are you going to do? You’ve just got to ride it out and hope it goes a little further east of here,” said Carson Ulrich, owner of a gas station and store in Lanark, on U.S. 98, the coastal highway that hugs the Gulf of Mexico.

“The previous owner of this place got wiped out by that storm in 2005. No insurance. That’s how we wound up buying it,” Ulrich said.

He eyed the rising water at a boat ramp just in back of his store. Ulrich said he was certain he’d be flooded by the time he returns to work today.

“I’ll put some sand bags at the front door. But around here, we’ve all seen this before,” he added.

Hermine was first identified as a tropical wave on Aug. 18 with a development area that aimed it at Southeast Florida. It was given an 80 percent chance of becoming a tropical cyclone at one point but didn’t start to build to tropical-storm strength until it hit the inviting 86-degree water of the Gulf of Mexico.

With that as fuel, Hermine spun up quickly. Hurricane watches or warnings stretched from north of Clearwater to just west of Panama City. Tropical storm-force winds extended 185 miles from the center of the storm.

In the middle of the cone of uncertainty was Tallahassee, an area that’s most recent closest call with a hurricane was 1998’s Hurricane Earl, according to Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach. Earl made landfall near Panama City on Sept. 3 as a Category 1 storm.

Hermine followed a path closer to 1985’s Hurricane Kate, which made landfall near Mexico Beach as a Category 2 storm and left Tallahassee in the dark for days.

“A lot of people are asking what is going to happen,” said James Elsner, chairman of Florida State University’s geography department. “Many have no experience with tropical systems.”

Florida State University, which began its fall semester Monday, closed campus early Thursday and was expected to remain that way today.

In Carrabelle, Ron Gempel, 73, grew up in West Palm Beach, but has owned a sandwich shop in the fishing town for the past dozen years. On Thursday, he and some helpers were covering the shop’s front windows with plywood.

Next door, the town’s only hardware store had already closed and sandbagged its front door.

“You’d think they could be open and selling stuff today,” Gempel said. “But it’s an old-time family business here. They know when it’s time to get out of the way of a storm.”

Gempel said there was little anyone could do but prepare, and clean up when Hermine moved on.

“Anyone who chooses to live here knows the score,” Gempel said. “I can go kayaking right down the street some days. Other days, you’ve got a hurricane to deal with.”

Elsner said the biggest concern in Tallahassee is trees falling on power lines and flooding and cautioned that he believes Hermine will be followed by more storms.

“One of the studies we’ve done shows that these storms do come in bunches,” Elsner said. “They are like bananas, and it’s unusual, very unusual, that we haven’t gotten hit since Wilma.”

In fact, as of Thursday, it was 3,965 days since Hurricane Wilma made landfall.

Leatherman said the strongest part of the storm – the right front quadrant – was going to hit in an area where it’s mostly marshland on the coast and sparsely populated.

“Florida has been lucky but the luck ran out,” said Greg Postal, a hurricane expert with the Weather Channel. “But it could have been a lot worse.”