Tropical Storm Debby has now made landfall for a second time in the US, as it barreled into the South Carolina coast in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Debby came ashore near Bulls Bay at around 1.45am ET , and charted its path northeast, bringing with it the threat of heavy rain and major flooding while at least one large tornado was repotrted in North Carolina.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned that the storm will first impact the South Carolina and North Carolina coastline and then continue moving inland to the Mid-Atlantic states.
Residents in the Carolinas and Western Virginia are under major flood threats with an additional three to nine inches of rainfall expected on Thursday.
A large tornado damaged a school in Lucama, North Carolina, and prompted orders for residents to take shelter in several surrounding counties.
As of early Thursday morning, parts of North Carolina and Virginia were under tornado watch warnings with more than five million people, 1,300 schools and almost 80 hospitals in the potential path, the National Weather Service said.
South Carolina can expect an additional one to two inches of rainfall, the NHC said, with a high risk of flash flooding through Thursday night.
South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster described the second landfall as act two of Debby’s “three-act play”, he wrote on X Wednesday evening.
Debby first made landfall on Monday morning as a Category 1 hurricane at Steinhatchee in Florida’s Big Bend region, before tearing its way to the Florida-Georgia border by the evening and being downgraded to a tropical storm.
At least five people were killed in Florida and Georgia as Debby brought hurricane-force winds, “catastrophic” floods and intense storm surge to the states and left hundreds of thousands of homeowners and businesses without power.
At least four dams were breached northwest of Savannah, South Carolina.
Debby continued to move northeast through parts of Georgia and South Carolina through Tuesday, before moving offshore and meandering in the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday.
There it stayed, causing thunderstorms from the East Coast to the Great Lakes before making landfall for a second time on Thursday morning.
It is expected to move northeast with residents as far as upstate New York and Vermont facing several inches of rainfall by this weekend.
By Saturday, Debby could move through central North Carolina, Virginia and into Washington where it is expected to become an extratropical cyclone.
“Tropical cyclones always produce heavy rain, but normally as they’re moving, you know, it doesn’t accumulate that much in one place,” the NHC’s Richard Patch previously explained.
Thousands of flights have been delayed across the East Coast since Debby first made landfall on Monday.
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