By David Beasley
ATLANTA, May 27 (Reuters) – Tropical Storm Beryl closed in
on the southeastern U.S. coast on Sunday as Memorial Day weekend
beachgoers braced for heavy rains and dangerous surf stretching
from northeast Florida to South Carolina.
The second named storm of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season
is expected to make landfall late Sunday or early Monday.
The powerful pack of thunderstorms has prompted tropical
storm warnings along the U.S. coastline in northern Florida,
Georgia and parts of South Carolina.
At 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT), Beryl was packing sustained winds
of 65 miles per hour (100 kph) and located about 110 miles (175
km) east of Jacksonville, Florida, the U.S. National Hurricane
Center said.
It was moving west toward the U.S. coast at 10 mph (17 kph)
with tropical storm force winds extending about 90 miles (150
km) from the center.
The storm’s approach led some vacationers on the Georgia
coast to pack up and leave early, said Alden Alias, the front
desk manager at The King and Prince Hotel on St. Simons Island,
a popular coastal resort town.
“The waves are pretty big,” she said. “The winds are
starting to pick up.”
Computer forecast models show Beryl moving on an eventual
path back out over the Atlantic after coming ashore, posing no
threat to U.S. oil and gas installations in the Gulf of Mexico.
Forecasters say it is expected to weaken to a depression on
Monday.
The storm is forecast to dump as much as 3 to 6 inches
(7.5-15 cm) of rain in some areas and threaten rip currents and
possible coastal flooding, the center said.
Beryl formed off the South Carolina coast late on Friday as
a subtropical storm, a reference to the storm’s structure.
Subtropical storms usually have a broader wind field than
tropical storms and shower and thunderstorm activity farther
removed from the storm’s center.
It was reclassified a tropical storm on Sunday.
Beryl followed the season’s first storm, Tropical Storm
Alberto, which was the earliest-forming Atlantic storm since
2003.
The Atlantic hurricane season officially runs from June 1 to
Nov. 30.
