MIAMI, Aug 3 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Floridians along the state’s Atlantic coast hunkered down on Sunday as Tropical Storm Isaias plowed northward just offshore, whipping the state with high winds, rain and the threat of flash floods as it went.
At 11 p.m. Eastern time, the center of the storm was about 50 miles off the Central Florida coast, near Cape Canaveral, and was moving north-northwest at about nine miles an hour, according to the National Hurricane Center. It had strengthened slightly from earlier in the day, with sustained winds of 70 m.p.h., only 4 m.p.h. below hurricane strength.
Isaias — (which is written Isaías in Spanish and pronounced ees-ah-EE-ahs) — clobbered the Bahamas with hurricane conditions on Saturday and early Sunday after hitting parts of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. It weakened to a tropical storm Saturday evening.
Flooding from the storm’s heavy rains led to the death of at least one person in Puerto Rico, the island’s Department of Public Safety said on Saturday in a statement. A woman who had been missing since Thursday drowned near Rincón, in the northwest portion of the island.
The center of the storm skirted the coast of Florida on Sunday without making landfall, and the southern part of the coast was left largely unscathed, aside from scattered power outages. Only about 200 people in Palm Beach County stayed at public shelters, out of a population of almost 1.5 million, according to Bill Johnson, the county director of emergency management.
“We are blessed that Hurricane Isaías spared us of significant damage,” Johnson said at a news conference Sunday. “I am pleased that this was more of an exercise than a real event — something we should all be grateful of.”
Forecasters said the storm would track northward and could fluctuate a bit in strength before coming ashore in the Carolinas on Monday. Hurricane watches were posted from South Santee River, S.C., north to Surf City, N.C., and tropical storm watches are posted all the way to Rhode Island.
Forecasters said the storm had the potential to spawn tornadoes in the Carolinas on Monday. — NNN-AGENCIES
