ST. GEORGE ISLAND, Fla. — Debby is ruining things for a lot of visitors despite weakening to a tropical depression and leaving Florida’s Gulf Coast behind.
The National Hurricane Center said Tuesday at 7 p.m. CDT that the tropical storm had been downgraded to a tropical depression with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph as it slogged across northern Florida toward the Atlantic coast.
But the storm system that lingered in the Gulf of Mexico for days before making landfall was still making its presence felt.
Vacationers were wearing ponchos instead of swimsuits at the peak of the summer season because of the tropical storm, which has drenched Florida for at least four days straight like a giant shower head set up over the state’s Gulf Coast. Debby has dumped as much as 26 inches of rain in some spots.
Disney World wasn’t as crowded as usual, and one of its water parks closed because of the soggy, windy weather. Also, Sea World closed early Monday.
Along the Florida panhandle, where Debby sat offshore nearly motionless for days, the parking lot at the 100-room Buccaneer Inn on St. George’s Island was empty because of a power failure ahead of the usually big pre-July Fourth weekend.
“We’ve had bad luck on this island,” said the inn’s vice president, JoAnn Shiver. “We’ve had Dennis. We’ve had Katrina. We had the oil spill.”
In a state where the biggest attractions are the sand and the sun, Debby forced many to make other plans.
Douglas and Carolyn Green of Nashville, Tenn., were supposed to spend a week on St. George Island with three generations of family but arrived to find the electricity was out and the bridge closed to nonresidents for fear of looters. They spent Monday night in nearby Apalachicola, and then all nine relatives headed to Fort Walton Beach.
“We never saw the island,” said Douglas Green. “We’re moving on. Plan B, I guess you’d call it.”
Debby finally blew ashore Tuesday afternoon near Steinhatchee in the Big Bend area, the crook of Florida’s elbow.At that point, it had sustained winds near 40 mph, barely a tropical storm hours before it was downgraded.
By Tuesday evening, Debby was 25 miles north of Cedar Key and was moving east-northeast at 6 mph. Forecasters said the center of Debby should be crossing the northern Florida peninsula during the next 24 hours and head into the Atlantic this afternoon. They said tropical storm-force winds were possible over parts of the Gulf Coast on Tuesday night.
Several areas in northern Florida have received more than 10 inches of rain, and forecasters said southeastern Georgia could expect the same. Wakulla, an area in northwestern Florida known for camping and canoeing, had gotten more than 26 inches as of Tuesday.
A woman was killed in a tornado spun off from the storm, and a man disappeared in the rough surf over the weekend in Alabama. The storm has knocked out power to 250,000 homes and business since it began over the weekend, but electricity had been restored to all but about 35,000 customers. Debby has caused mostly scattered flooding, but forecasters warned it could get worse.
“Even though the winds are coming down, the rain threat continues,” said James Franklin at the National Hurricane Center. “We expect another 4 to 8 inches, in some of these areas up in north Florida, in particular.”
President Barack Obama called Florida Gov. Rick Scott and promised the state will have “no unmet needs” as it deals with the flooding, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
Parts of Interstate 10, the main east-west highway across northern Florida, were shut down because of flooding.
In Apalachicola, the popular Boss Oyster restaurant was closed for the third day in a row after the rain overwhelmed the sewers and knocked out drinking water.
Information for this article was contributed by Tamara Lush, Tony Winton, Melissa Nelson and Ken Thomas of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 06/27/2012