VALDOSTA — Rain was pouring down on southeast Georgia and coastal South Carolina as Mindy, now a tropical depression, made its way across the states early Thursday.
The storm made landfall in St. Vincent Island, Florida, on Wednesday night. Mindy was expected to bring as much as 6 inches of rainfall across the Florida Panhandle and portions of southern Georgia and South Carolina through Thursday morning, the National Hurricane Center said. Scattered flash, urban and small-stream floods are possible.
The storm on Thursday morning was about 80 miles southeast of Valdosta and moving northeast at 20 mph with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph, forecasters said.
Florida’s Big Bend area was already saturated from rain dumped by Hurricanes Elsa and Ida. Some residents in low-lying Dixie County have had to move out of their homes, which were flooded before Mindy brought more rain.
Diane Van Hook has been living at a hotel for weeks because her property is flooded and there’s no electricity in her home.
“There’s no hope of going home anytime soon because of how deep the water is,” Van Hook told WGFL-TV in Gainesville, Florida, on Wednesday. “There’s no place for us to even walk, you know. I had to remove my horse from the property, and I lost my chickens.”
Mandy Lemmermen, spokesperson for the county’s emergency management office, told the television station that as the water recedes in some areas, it rises in others.
“Now we’re seeing where people who weren’t flooded a week or two ago are now flooded as the water moves throughout the county,” she said, adding the area expected between 2 to 4 inches of rain from Mindy.
A slower east-northeastward motion is forecast Thursday night through Saturday. The center of Mindy is expected to move across southeastern Georgia on Thursday morning and over the western Atlantic by later in the day. Little change in strength is forecast through Thursday night. Gradual weakening is expected on Friday, and Mindy is forecast to become a remnant low by Saturday.
The tropical storm warning that was in effect from Mexico Beach, Florida, to the Steinhatchee River was canceled. That area is about 300 miles east of southern Louisiana, where Hurricane Ida made landfall late last month. The region is still recovering from the deadly and destructive Category 4 storm.
Mindy is the 13th-named storm of what has been another busy Atlantic hurricane season. According to a tweet from Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach, the average date for the 13th-named storm from 1991 to 2020 was Oct. 24.
