Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
Regardless where Elsa ultimately makes landfall, the Big Bend region is likely to get tropical storm conditions on Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service (NWS), a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The agency’s forecast for the region on Tuesday morning, July 6, called for storm-related heavy rainfalls and thunderstorms beginning later in the day and lasting through Thursday.
According to the agency’s 5 a.m. advisory for the Big Bend area, a hurricane watch was in effect for coastal Dixie County and a tropical storm warning for Lafayette County.
Tropical storm warnings and storm surge watches were also in effect for coastal Jefferson, Taylor and Wakulla counties, while tropical storm warnings were in effect for inland Dixie, Taylor and Lafayette counties.
Meanwhile, a tropical storm watch was in effect for inland Jefferson and Madison counties.
A tropical storm watch means that tropical storm-force winds are possible somewhere within the area within the next 48 hours.
Elsa on Tuesday morning was about 460 miles south-southeast of Panama City, or about 420 miles south-southeast of Apalachicola, with winds of 60 mph and moving north-northwest at 12 mph.
The storm was forecast to enter the eastern Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday morning and track northward roughly parallel to the Florida Peninsula through Tuesday night, with some strengthening expected.
Elsa is forecasted to make landfall as a strong tropical storm somewhere along the Southeast Big Bend around Wednesday morning before moving across the state and into Georgia. A slight chance existed that Elsa could become a hurricane as it came ashore, according to the NWS.
The agency advised that conditions could begin to deteriorate across the Southeast Big Bend as early as Tuesday evening, with tropical storm conditions expected by Tuesday night and into Wednesday, complete with possible strong winds that could cause downed tree limbs, power outages and loose item to fly about.
A storm surge of around two to four feet was also possible across the region, as was rainfall of two to four inches, with isolated amounts of near five to six inches in some areas.
“This rainfall could cause some localized flooding issues across the Southeast Big Bend,” the NWS warned. “An isolated tornado or two will also be possible across the eastern Big Bend.”
Once it made landfall, the storm was expected to weaken as it moved inland, with its wind speeds decreasing. It was forecast that most of north central Florida from the landfall location to Jacksonville would rarely see gusts that exceeded 35 mph.
Elsa was expected to sweep across southeast Georgia on Wednesday and eventually turn into a depression as it crossed the Carolinas.
The season’s first hurricane turned tropical storm, Elsa was a Category 1 hurricane until Saturday, when it was downgraded to a tropical storm. It is ranked the earliest fifth-named storm on record, and also a record-breaker in term of its speedy movement, clocking in at 31 mph on Saturday morning, according to a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami.
The NWS reminds Floridians that the odds continue to favor another very active hurricane season, the sixth in a row in fact, with renewed uptick in tropical activity expected in the Atlantic and Gulf later in July and in August.
On the lighter side, if there is a lighter side to hurricanes, the Internet and Facebook are reportedly exploding with humorous memes about the song “Let it go” from the animated Disney movie “Frozen,” of which Elsa is a character.
Some are even ascribing a Disney theme to the hurricane season, noting that three of the names for storms so far this year have derived from protagonists in “Frozen”: First Ana and now Elsa in the Atlantic, and Olaf in the Eastern Pacific.