Tropical Storm Debby hasn’t walloped Georgia as hard as initially feared after coming ashore on Florida’s Gulf Coast early Monday.
But Debby’s mix of wind and rain still downed trees and power lines and flooded some areas as it traversed the southern part of the Peach State before heading out to the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporters and photographers spread across South Georgia and coastal Georgia this week to track the storm’s impact on communities.
Here are some of their dispatches from Tuesday:
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer
A test for Savannah’s famous water oak trees
Twisting oak trees draped in Spanish moss infuse Savannah with some of its trademark charm, but those symbols of the city’s historic beauty can be a menace during hurricanes and tropical storms. Particularly in heavy rain events such as Tropical Storm Debby.
Oaks soak up water quickly but can become oversaturated, resulting in heavy limbs and even whole trees falling. Water oaks are particularly susceptible, unlike their cousin the live oak. The water oak’s roots are shallow and spread far from the trunk for stability. Live oak roots run deep into the ground before spreading horizontally.
So it came as no surprise to find tree debris scattered across the Savannah area Tuesday after Monday’s heavy rains — as much as 10 inches in some areas. Limbs and large branches littered neighborhoods like Ardsley Park and Isle of Hope, where developers preserved tree canopies while building houses and other structures. Chainsaw-wielding residents were hard at work cleaning up, pausing just long enough to say how fortunate they felt that Debby didn’t bring more damage to the area.
-Adam Van Brimmer
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Some Savannah residents headed to shelters
Emergency shelters at the Savannah Civic Center and Enmarket Arena served about 30 residents displaced by Tropical Storm Debby’s rains. The City of Savannah added the Enmarket Arena, which opened in 2022, as an overflow shelter for the first time in its history in anticipation of projected “historic rainfall” and the effect on the flood-prone neighborhoods around the venue.
Savannah received significantly less rain than forecast and officials were encouraging shelter seekers who arrived Tuesday to instead use the Savannah Civic Center, located a mile east of the Enmarket Arena in the city’s historic downtown. That facility has served as a hurricane emergency shelter for decades.
Savannah also housed 45 residents in another shelter at the Tompkins Regional Center, located on the city’s western edge.
-Adam Van Brimmer
Credit: Ligaya Figueras
Credit: Ligaya Figueras
On St. Simons Island, visitor “closed eyes and turned off lights”
Less than 12 hours after Tropical Storm Debby swept through St. Simons Island, activity resumed on the popular vacation spot. On Tuesday morning, the area showed little signs of flooding or damage, apart from occasional fallen branches and yards and streets littered with twigs.
Despite red warning lights indicating high hazard at East Beach and Gould’s Inlet, a few surfers and boogie boarders took to choppy waters in the hopes of catching waves while plenty of walkers and joggers resumed their morning beach exercise routine.
Credit: Ligaya Figueras
Credit: Ligaya Figueras
Under gray skies and breezy conditions, Rulong and Becky VanDyke of Suwanee sat on a bench at Neptune Park overlooking St. Simons Sound. The couple arrived on the island Saturday for a weeklong family vacation. Monday’s downpour was their first experience waiting out a tropical storm but it left them unfazed. “I closed my eyes and turned off the lights,” said Becky VanDyke.
Rain is forecast for the area through Friday, but the couple plans to make the most of what remains in their trip, including a visit to Georgia Sea Turtle Center on nearby Jekyll Island.
“We are going to whatever will open up,” she said. ”Once you pay for the rental, you can’t get (the money) back,” added her husband.
-Ligaya Figueras
Credit: Ligaya Figueras
Credit: Ligaya Figueras
Fallen trees, power outages, backyard ponds, rain gardens in Brunswick
Glynn County reported 35 downed trees while the City of Brunswick had reports of three fallen trees early Tuesday. Power outages around Glynn County during the tropical storm peaked at 9,000. An estimated 1,000 customers remained without power as of 9:30 a.m. Tuesday.
”The city came out very well. We did not have much damage at all,” said Brunswick city engineer Garrow Alberson. “We had some flooding in the College Park neighborhood. I don’t know the extent of that yet. That’s the only area that it flooded any homes.”
Credit: Ligaya Figueras
Credit: Ligaya Figueras
College Park is a small neighborhood located just south of the Golden Isles Parkway accessed via Altama Avenue and Community Road.
Alberson said that a few intersections in the city were temporarily closed Monday due to flooding but those have since drained.
”Our biggest problem is heavy rains at the high tide point,” Alberson said. “But from the forecast I am hearing, the rain won’t cause us too much problems.”
Credit: Ligaya Figueras
Credit: Ligaya Figueras
In College Park, the rainfall turned a section of Palamor Drive into a lake. Retirees Willie Adam and his wife Theresa have lived in their 1960s ranch home for more than 50 years.
”It didn’t use to be like this,” said Willie Adam, looking out the kitchen window to a backyard that had become a pond filled with at least a foot of water.
According to Adam, they have dealt with persistent flooding for decades. He attributes the flooding to the low foundation and inadequate drainage ditches behind his home and across the street.
”It don’t never drain like it should,” said Adam, 78, who placed sandbags at the front and rear entrance to his home in preparation for Debby. “They claim to get money every year to fix the ditch,” he said, “but they never did nothing.”
The house stayed dry, though.
Credit: Ligaya Figueras
Credit: Ligaya Figueras
A few miles away, in Urbana/Perry Park, some residents leaned on “rain gardens” that filter stormwater and allow it to be absorbed back into the soil.
In 2020, Semona Holmes and her husband Gregory installed a six-foot-deep pit filled with mulch and water plants that stretches their property line on Macon Avenue just blocks from the Marshes of Glynn Overlook Park along Hwy. 17. On Tuesday, the rain garden had done its job, with no signs of standing water left to absorb.
Other nearby homeowners, including William Kitts of Niles Avenue, also have built the gardens as part of a program initiated by the University of Georgia Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant in 2019.
”It really does capture the bulk of the water that lands on the property,” Kitts said. “It drains pretty quickly.”
Kitts ticked off numerous advantages to the rain garden, including the lack of maintenance and fertilization as well as the aesthetic beauty. “Just put it in and leave it alone,” he said of the plants that include horsemint (which also helps to repel mosquitoes), wild petunias, false sunflowers, black-eyed susans, seaside goldenrod and swamp rosemallow.
Rain gardens take many shapes, but generally, they are small, lower-elevation areas around homes planted with grasses and flowers to collect rainwater. As rain runs off streets and sidewalks, the garden’s plants and permeable surfaces allow water to slowly percolate into the ground, rather than pond near homes where it can cause flood damage.
-Ligaya Figueras
Credit: Joe Kovac
Credit: Joe Kovac
Blackshear fire chief brings out sandbags for first time in long time
In Blackshear, in Pierce County, Fire Chief Bucky Goble said Debby dumped about 8 inches of rain on Monday and the first part of Tuesday.
It was the first time he can recall in recent decades having to use sandbags to prevent about 10 houses from flooding.
“They had water coming in up under the doors and walls,” he said Tuesday.
The water had since receded despite a steady, misting drizzle early Tuesday afternoon. Around the city, firefighters handled close to 20 emergency calls. A couple of roads washed out.
-Joe Kovac Jr.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Homerville resident’s American flag emerges unscathed
In Homerville in Clinch County, there were water-logged yards and some snapped trees, but few signs of major damage.
An oak tree keeled over on a house on Old Pearson Road.
On Court Street on the north side of Homerville, pine trees clipped power lines and heavy rains briefly flooded yards on Monday, but by Tuesday life was back to normal.
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
George Smith, 67, hangs a massive American flag in front of the camper trailer where he lives.
The storm, he said, “wasn’t that bad. It blowed a tree over (across the street) and knocked the power out for a little while. But other than that it wasn’t all that bad.”
-Joe Kovac Jr.
Credit: Joe Kovac
Credit: Joe Kovac
‘Dodged a bullet’ in Valdosta
“We dodged a bullet,” a cop here in Valdosta said Tuesday morning.
Meghan Barwick, a spokesperson for the Lowndes County EMA, said authorities “are in cleanup and recovery now. We’ve got our crews cleaning trees off of roads and checking the roads.”
Crews here were also repairing a handful of traffic lights and power lines, after more than 20,000 county residents lost electricity on Monday.
Other than a neighborhood lane or two, a reporter and photographer didn’t see any blocked streets of note.
Valdosta is about 90 miles north of where Debby made landfall on Florida’s Gulf coast as a hurricane, before it began to cross over land and was downgraded to a tropical storm.
-Joe Kovac Jr.
