Tropical Storm Debby is drenching Florida towns still recovering from Idalia and Ian

Tropical Storm Debby left a trail of flooding and power outages Monday in parts of Florida still recovering from several major storms in recent years. Debby is now heading north, where it is expected to do more damage.

The storm made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane north of Steinhatchee, about 80 miles west of Gainesville. That’s just 20 miles south of where Hurricane Idalia hit Florida as a Category 3 storm less than a year ago.

Though Idalia had far stronger winds, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) warned residents that Debby would bring “way more water.”

“This did not bring the catastrophic hurricane-force winds that we’ve seen in previous storms like Hurricane Ian,” DeSantis said at an afternoon news conference from the state’s Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee. “But it has and continues to produce lots of water.”

Four deaths were attributed to the storm Monday. A 13-year-old boy was crushed when a tree fell on the mobile home in which he lived, according to the Levy County Sheriff’s Office. In Hillsborough County near Tampa, the driver of a semitrailer was killed when the truck plunged into a canal near Interstate 75. Two other people were killed in Dixie County in a traffic accident on slick roads.

Even before Debby hit land, the storm’s outer bands were bringing déjà vu to coastal towns from the Florida Keys up through Tampa Bay. The Sarasota Police Department posted photos of water rushing past damaged businesses. Photos and video shared on social media showed flooding outside stores and restaurants in Fort Myers Beach, which was decimated by Hurricane Ian in 2022.

In Cedar Key, a number of businesses inundated by floodwater during Idalia had recently begun to reopen. The island community known as “Clamelot” is in the Gulf of Mexico and produces most of Florida’s clams. Residents were assessing the damage and beginning to clean up once again Monday.

“They just finished the final repairs on our post office last Friday, and it got flooded,” said Phil Prescott, a volunteer chaplain for the town’s police and fire departments. Cedar Key’s only grocery store reopened in March, and he said it also flooded.

Bridges over Tampa Bay were closed, as were schools and courthouses in more than a dozen north Florida counties. Early voting scheduled to begin Monday for the Aug. 20 primaries was canceled in several counties as well. Over 195,000 utility customers were without electricity as of early Monday evening, according to poweroutage.us.

Officials in Manatee County, north of Sarasota, said first responders rescued 32 adults, 12 children and 13 pets from high waters there. Seven coastal counties issued mandatory evacuation orders ahead of the storm for people on barrier islands and in other low-lying or flood-prone areas.

“We are urging everyone to stay off the roads unless travel is absolutely necessary,” said Jodie Fiske, Manatee County’s public safety director. “We do not need disaster tourists.”

By Monday afternoon, the National Hurricane Center had downgraded Debby to a tropical storm as peak winds decreased to 70 mph. While it’s no longer a hurricane, the storm’s most dangerous phase lies ahead.

Forecasters predict that some of the most serious impacts could come as Debby reaches southeast Georgia and the eastern Carolinas. The system is expected to stall and unleash “potentially historic” amounts of rain and “catastrophic flooding,” according to the National Hurricane Center. A few areas could see record-breaking amounts near 30 inches.

At Charleston International Airport, the Weather Service said 2.29 inches of rain had already fallen as of Monday afternoon, breaking a record for the date, with the storm just getting started. Residents were filling up city parking garages to keep their vehicles out of flood-prone areas as rain started to fall. Some roads were already closed, and police warned drivers to avoid floodwater starting to cover some thoroughfares.

Meteorologists have been warning that this hurricane season could be among the most active on record — and Debby helps back up those predictions. The storm arrived several weeks ahead of schedule, relative to a typical Atlantic tropical cyclone season. On average, the second Atlantic hurricane of the year forms around Aug. 24, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Debby is the second hurricane to strike the United States this year, after Beryl, which pounded the Texas coast in early July. That is rare by this point in the year; it has happened eight other times since recordkeeping began in 1851, according to Colorado State University hurricane researcher Philip Klotzbach.

Florida’s Gulf Coast and inland central and northern parts of the state have endured several powerful storms since 2022. Ian struck southwest Florida as a Category 4 storm in September 2022. Over 150 people were killed directly or indirectly because of the storm. Hurricane Nicole slammed the state’s east coast two months later. Hurricane Idalia last year resulted in 12 fatalities and an estimated $3.6 billion in damage in the United States, according to a National Hurricane Center report.

Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said Monday that rivers and streams “are rapidly rising” and that the impacts from floods and high water will be felt “for the next five to seven days, even 10 days.”

Several thousand Florida National Guard troops were on standby to help with search-and-rescue operations. Seventeen thousand linemen were also being deployed to help get power restored.

The U.S. Coast Guard posted video of a dramatic rescue of two boaters who were adrift 73 miles off the Lee County coast Sunday as Debby whipped up seas as high as 20 feet.

Fort Myers Beach was one of the towns hit hardest by Ian. Though the storm surge from Debby was far less — a little over 3 feet, compared with over 13 feet during Ian — town manager Andy Hyatt said the storm “turned out to be a little more than we expected.” Nonetheless, he said, this time the town was prepared. Cleanup crews were shoveling sand that swamped roads and clearing debris Monday.

“Thank goodness, knock on wood, we didn’t receive much damage,” he said at an emergency meeting Monday. “But we do have some cleaning to do.”

- - -

Scott Dance and Jason Samenow contributed to this report.