Hurricane Hermine nears landfall in Florida


With Hurricane Hermine just hours away from landfall along the Gulf Coast of Florida, heavy rains are already pelting parts of the state and high winds are coming ashore.
Hermine is a Category 1 hurricane, and Weather Channel meteorologist Ari Sarsalari said the entire Big Bend area — where the state's peninsula meets the Panhandle — is in for "a brutal night." Hermine is expected to make landfall early Friday somewhere between Apalachicola and Horseshoe Beach, and Gov. Rick Scott (R) has put 51 counties under a state of emergency. Sarsalari said the storm surge is "going to be the scariest part of Hurricane Hermine," and the National Weather Service warns of "life-threatening inundation within the next 12 to 24 hours" along the Gulf Coast from Indian Pass to Longboat Key.
The hurricane is expected to become a non-tropical low over the weekend as it makes its way up the coast to the Carolinas on Friday and Saturday. This will be the first hurricane landfall in Florida since Hurricane Wilma hit in 2005.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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