VALDOSTA — Thousands of residents were without power in parts of South Georgia on Monday afternoon as Tropical Storm Debby began to whip up modest wind gusts and early rain bands on its journey across the Peach State after making landfall in Florida earlier in the day.
The National Weather Service warned officials here in Lowndes County that stronger rain bands could hit Valdosta and neighboring cities and towns in the coming hours, heightening the risk of flooding, as the hurricane-turned-tropical storm slowly churns across the southern part of the state on its way to Georgia’s coast.
“There is still a possibility to see some flooding rains with a total of 10 to 15 inches, which is what was forecasted,” Meghan Barwick, a spokesperson for the Lowndes County Emergency Management Agency, said early Monday afternoon.
Some power lines and trees were down, but so far the damage is much less than when Hurricane Idalia ripped through this part of Georgia last year after also making landfall in Florida’s Gulf of Mexico.
About 25,000 people in Lowndes County were without electrical power, in a county of about 120,000 residents, according to emergency officials.
The main streets of Valdosta, the county seat, were largely empty Monday afternoon as locals stayed out of the weather, although no roads were flooded. Schools and offices were closed.
Most eateries were also closed. At a Lowe’s store on the north side of the city, two dozen pizzas were carted out to employees for lunch.
A steady stream of customers was backing up their trucks and SUVs at the front doors of the home-improvement store on St. Augustine Road, where electrical generators they’d just purchased were being loaded.
Jared O’Neal, 55, who lives in Clyattville between Valdosta and the Florida border, said his lights went out about 8 a.m. So he cranked an old generator he owns. But it conked out. So he ventured out in the rain to get a new one.
Last year, his house sustained nearly $50,000 in damage when Hurricane Idalia tore through. “We just finished doing all the repairs on that,” O’Neal said.
A Lowe’s employee who was helping load O’Neal’s generator said he had sold about 30 generators in three hours. Another worker said the store sold about $50,000 worth of generators on Sunday.
As customer Carl Slocumb, who lives on the north side of town, strapped a generator to the bed of his Jeep, he said he hoped to keep food in his refrigerator from spoiling.
“What’s ironic is, last year when Idalia came through, I told my wife, ‘We’re not going to go through this again. We’re going to go get a generator,’” he recalled. “That was almost a year ago and we didn’t. So here we are.”
Although forecasters say the rain is likely to pick up, winds are expected to subside as the evening wears on.
Valdosta is about 90 miles north of where Debby made landfall on Florida’s Gulf coast.
Farther to the east, in Ware County, there had been a few inches of rain but no flooding as of midafternoon Monday, according to Carl James, the sheriff.
Earlier on Monday, on I-75 just south of Perry, Georgia, a convoy of at least two dozen electrical power repair trucks was driving south toward the storm. Otherwise, though, highway traffic was very light in both directions.
The outer bands of Debby were also being felt in Savannah and other parts of Georgia’s Atlantic coast, ahead of heavier rains expected on Tuesday.
Across border in Florida, heavy rains after Debby made landfall
Hurricane Debby made landfall with 80 mph winds about 7 a.m. at Steinhatchee, a fishing village on the coast of Taylor County about 90 miles southeast of Tallahassee in Florida’s Big Bend, where the panhandle meets the peninsula. Later on Monday, Debby was downgraded to a tropical storm.
Last year, Category 3 Hurricane Idalia devastated the same area in Florida, already in economic crisis because of the closure of the county’s largest employer, a Georgia-Pacific paper mill in the county seat of Perry, Florida. Power remained out in most of the county at lunch on Monday. The 2023 and 2024 landfall locations are only 10 miles apart.
The slow-moving storm downed power lines and uprooted trees across the region as it ambled northeast toward South Georgia. More than 300,000 utility customers across North Florida were without power at 9 a.m.
Despite being downgraded to a tropical storm within hours, Debby is dropping massive amounts of rain on North Florida, already drenched from daily rain and thunderstorms over the past few weeks. Tallahassee remains under a Tropical Storm Warning until 10:30 p.m. Officials expect rain to continue most throughout the night before tapering off Tuesday.
As of 1:30 p.m., Debby appeared to have stalled over North Florida, just south of the Georgia line, although its impact was already being felt in Georgia.
Tallahassee was just west of the worst damage, but its famed tree canopy took a hit, with massive live oaks toppling and taking down power lines. City utility crews, joined by mutual aid crews from Alabama, worked between rain squalls to restore power to 25,000 customers by early afternoon; almost 8,000 remained without power. Mutual aid crews from Louisiana arrived shortly after lunch to replace broken utility poles.
City officials warned that additional power outages could occur as rain bands continue to slowly pass through. Flooding is expected to continue for the next five to 10 days across the region as forecasters predict “catastrophic rains” in North Florida and Southeast Georgia today through Wednesday.
Gov. Ron DeSantis asked people to stay home and off the roads. A woman and a 12-year-old boy were killed in a one-car accident in Dixie County, just south of Taylor County, Sunday evening as the storm approached. A 14-year-old boy was hospitalized with serious injuries. All three were from Crawfordville, just south of Tallahassee, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
On May 10, three tornadoes tore through Tallahassee shortly after dawn, killing two people, knocking out power across the city and creating mountains of tree debris that is still being removed.
--Audrey Post contributed to this report from Tallahassee.
--An earlier version of this article misstated Ware County’s location relative to Valdosta.
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