Florida, United States

Hurricane Debby on Monday (August 5) made landfall on Florida's Gulf Coast, knocking out the power supply for hundreds of thousands of people. This comes as the US southeast braces for historic levels of rain and major flooding.

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Category one hurricane in Florida

Fuelled by an unusually warm Gulf of Mexico, as per reports, Debby barrelled ashore in Florida's Big Bend region as a Category One hurricane — the lowest on a five-stage scale.

According to tracker poweroutage.us, already over 300,000 customers in the region have lost electricity.

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Talking to reporters on Monday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said, "We have seen significant storm surge, we have seen inundation, we have seen and we'll continue to see flooding in various parts of the state of Florida."

Also read | Debby becomes hurricane, threatens Florida, other parts of US southeast

He also warned about the risk of "significant flooding events" in the coming days.

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"We have a lot of restoration personnel ready to go to get it back on," said DeSantis.

Additionally, the Florida National Guard has been activated by DeSantis, and 3,000 service members have been put on standby for storm response.

Life-threatening storm surges

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) has launched a warning against life-threatening storm surges along the Gulf Coast. Expected inundation levels may range from six to ten feet (1.8 to 3 metres) above ground. 

NHC warned that Hurricane Debby might cause catastrophic flooding with "potentially historic heavy rainfall" as, over the next few days, the storm moves northeast across Georgia and South Carolina.

Meanwhile, the storm is weakening. Its maximum sustained winds, which were 80 mph (around 130 km/h) at landfall, have decreased to 75 mph (over 120 km/h).

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The storm is expected to dump about six to 12 inches (30.48 centimetres) of rain in parts of the US state. Meanwhile, in coastal Georgia and South Carolina, the NHC said that Debby can dump as much as 20 (50.8 centimetres) to 30 inches (76.2 cm) of rainwater.

Mandatory evacuations have been ordered for part of Citrus County, Florida as authorities predicted multiple days of possibly record-breaking rainfall and likely flash flooding.

Eight other counties are under voluntary evacuation orders, reported local media. Meanwhile, state of emergency has been declared in Georgia and South Carolina by the states' Governors.

(With inputs from agencies)