Hurricane Sally became Tropical Storm Sally by Wednesday afternoon and weakened to a tropical depression that evening after making early morning landfall as a Category 2 storm with 105 mph winds and gusts of 120 mph, but its slow-moving drenching of the Gulf Coast left many coastal cities flooded and hundreds of thousands without power.
Since landfall around 6 a.m. EDT near the Alabama-Florida border, Sally slowly crawled farther into the mainland, pushing storm surge water past the coast and besieging some Florida Panhandle communities with rainfall totals exceeding 2 feet.
Sally’s northernmost eyewall made landfall in Gulf Shores, Ala., the National Hurricane Center said. By 11 p.m., Sally had lost strength to 35 mph, losing its status as a tropical storm, and was located 30 miles south-southeast of Montgomery, Ala. moving northeast at 9 mph.
More than 600,000 Alabama, Louisiana and Florida customers were without power as of Wednesday evening, according to Poweroutage.us.
Sally’s powerful storm surge was recorded at 8.5 feet along in Pensacola, said NHC director Ken Graham. Damages have been extensive including a portion of Pensacola’s Three Mile Bridge, which went missing Wednesday morning, according to the Santa Rosa County Emergency Management.
When it was making its landfall this morning, the NHC recorded a wind gust of 120 mph at Dauphin Island, Ala.. A gust of 76 mph was reported at an unofficial observing site at Tate High School, near Pensacola and sustained wind of 47 mph and a gust of 60 mph was observed at the Okaloosa Fishing Pier, near Okaloosa Island.
Howling winds, metal sheet and beams scraping against concrete and exploding transformers were the sounds Pensacola residents heard during the agonizing long hours Sally spent crawling into the coastline Wednesday morning, said CNN reporter Mike Evans. The ocean flowed into downtown, with white-capped salt water slapping against parked cars. The torrential rain downed trees and the wind snapped stoplights and road signs, making any effort to venture outside hazardous.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said there had been no reports of fatalities from the storm, but that people need to be vigilant as rising waters from continued rain will keep flooding an issue even into the weekend.
“People should be very, very careful. It is hazardous,” DeSantis said. “Do not try to go out in there. There could be power lines down in the water. Don’t try to drive your car through it. It’s something that you could very much regret. It is potentially, in certain areas, life-threatening.”
DeSantis activated 500 Florida National Guard soldiers with more help from Florida Fish & Wildlife officers and the Florida Highway Patrol as well as some help from Tennessee and Oklahoma.
State crews were deployed alongside county authorities to bring generators to some locations, including one long-term care facility to ensure power remained on, and not face the deadly results that some nursing homes saw in South Florida when they lost power during Hurricane Irma in 2017.
DeSantis said he would be flying over Pensacola on Thursday to survey the damage, taking an aerial tour with the help from the Coast Guard.
“There is going to be a lot of property damage,” DeSantis said. “When you see downtown Pensacola, you see 3 feet of water there, that’s going to affect probably every business that’s in downtown Pensacola. There’s just no two ways about it.”
President Donald Trump approved Florida’s emergency declaration making federal aid available to the Panhandle and supplement response efforts. With the approval, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been given authority to coordinate disaster relief efforts.
Sally’s storm surge and torrential rain damaging parked cars and prompting many calls for evacuations, dumping a deluge on urban areas whose combined populations total nearly 1 million people. Many will need to be evacuated from rising water, said Sheriff David Morgan in Escambia County, where deputies were rescuing dozens of people from swamped homes.
Trent Airhart, one of dozens of utility workers who came to Pensacola to make repairs, waded through brown water as much as 4 feet deep to move trucks to safer positions. He had to dodge flotsam as pieces of limbs and building material fell into the water, using his feet to feel his way past curbs and parking barriers.
Jordan Muse, trapped with her 15-year-old daughter Maleah and 8-year-old son Ayden in a hotel surrounded by floodwater, briefly stepped outside to snap an image of the surge. She said they live in a mobile home about 15 miles away, and sought shelter in the hotel. She parked outside, and moved her car four times during the night to avoid the rising water, but it was still floor-deep before sunrise.
“I can’t believe it got so bad,” she said. “Everything’s under water, buildings … this is crazy.”
The sounds of Sally terrified residents around the Alabama coast, including 54-year-old Michelle Platt, a resident of Orange Beach, which is about 10 miles east of where Sally made landfall.
“It was deafening. It honestly sounded like a locomotive. I’ve never been been so scared in all my life,” she said. “There was this screeching mangled metal noise in the background of the wind and the rain. When I looked out the window, I saw what looked like was metal from the dock that broke off.”
Platt stayed in her coastal home under the belief Sally would be a Category 1 hurricane, and was unafraid, but fear kicked in as Sally’s outer bands passed over Tuesday night. Fearing the worst, Platt sent her husband, who is in Rhode Island for work, a text saying “I love you.”
“My whole house was shaking from 10:30 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. I’ve never been so scared in all my life,” Platt said.
Sally decreased to a Category 1 storm after making landfall, however, the hurricane’s defining characteristic was its sluggish speed, allowing it more time to besiege the coastline with strong storm surge and a longer period of time to inundate the mainland’s rivers, streams and lakes with heavy rain.
Many areas throughout the Gulf Coast received over 2 feet of rain.
Sally is forecast to weaken further into a remnant low by Friday as it heads toward Georgia and the Carolinas.
The storm quickly brought 15 inches of rainfall to Mobile Bay, said Mike Evans, deputy director of Mobile County emergency management agency, in an interview with CNN. The ground has become saturated making trees and power poles vulnerable to being pushed down by strong winds, Evans said. He and the team were waiting for sunrise to assess the damages. The agency has received minimal 911 calls, causing Evans to speculate most residents may have fled to inland shelters.
In Orange Beach, Ala., 50 rescues had been made Wednesday morning from flooded homes, The Associated Press reported.
Sally’s long battle against the Gulf Coast started Tuesday afternoon with rain bands and rising sea waters reaching the mainland. Low lying properties in southeast Louisiana were swamped by the surge. Water covered Mississippi beaches and parts of the highway that runs parallel to them. Two large casino boats broke loose from a dock where they were undergoing construction work in Alabama.
Sally’s slow speed is not unlike 2017’s Hurricane Harvey; another slow-moving storm that dropped historic amounts of rainfall of more than 60 inches over southeastern Texas and surrounding communities. Harvey, a Category 4 storm, was the second costliest hurricane next to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.
Sally’s threat of flooding won’t just affect the Gulf Coast area, but it is also forecast stretch through the Southeast with 4-8 inches and some areas up to 12 inches across portions of southeastern Mississippi, southern and central Alabama, northern Georgia, and the western Carolinas, Graham said in a Facebook video.
“Because of that slow movement, we’re going to see torrential rainfall, dangerous rainfall. Large forecast for the rainfall totals here,” said Graham who reinforced the forecast of some areas receiving up to 30 inches of rain. “That’s a history making amount of rain. Dangerous, very life threatening situation with that rainfall. You have to pay attention and have a plan and not be out there traveling. If water covers the road turn around. Don’t drown. It’s a dangerous situation to be on the roadways here.”
Graham also noted that the flash flooding could affect resident hundreds of miles from the coast.
While Sally is commanding the most attention, the NHC is monitoring six other tropical systems.
Paulette weakened from its hurricane status into a Post Tropical Cyclone Wednesday morning. In its last advisory Wednesday morning, the storm was 450 miles south of Cape Race, Newfoundland and no longer a threat to land.
Hurricane Teddy, located 670 miles east-northeast of the Lesser Antilles, is moving northwest at 13 mph. Teddy formed early Wednesday and is a Category 1 storm with winds of 90 mph.
It is expected to become a Category 3 major hurricane by Thursday and is headed in Bermuda’s general direction but should weaken to a Cat 2 storm when it approaches the island over the weekend or early next week.
Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 35 miles from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 255 miles. Large swells started to reach the Lesser Antilles and South America on Wednesday.
Also, Tropical Storm Vicky was located 860 miles west-northwest of the Cabo Verde Islands with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph as of 11 p.m. Wednesday. Vicky is moving west at 10 mph with tropical-storm-force winds extending out 35 miles.
Vicky is expected to lose more strength and become a remnant low by late Thursday.
Meanwhile, the NHC is monitoring three other tropical developments in the already-busy Atlantic.
First, a surface trough over the west-central Gulf of Mexico is producing more organized shower activity, and the NHC now says it could develop into a tropical depression by the end of the week it meanders over the Gulf waters. It has a 50% chance of developing in the next two days and a 70% chance of developing in the next five.
Second, the NHC says a low-pressure system that formed off a tropical wave off the west coast of Africa has more concentrated shower and thunderstorm activity and likely to develop into a tropical depression in the next couple of days. The system now a few hundred miles south-southeast of the Cabo Verde Islands is moving west at 10-15 mph. The NHC lowered its chances of formation to 40% in the next two days, and 60% in the next five days.
Finally, a system located in a nontropical area in the far northeast Atlantic Ocean several hundred miles northeast of the Azores. The low-pressure system is forecast to move south-southeast in the next few days though and could encounter warmer waters with the potential to grow into a system with tropical or subtropical characteristics. The NHC gives it a 10% chance to form in the next two to five days.
Hurricane season ends on Nov. 30. NOAA forecast this year an estimated 19 to 25 named storms was possible before the end of season — it was the largest forecast NOAA ever predicted.
Orlando Sentinel staff writers Mark Skoneki, Richard Tribou, David Harris, Katie Rice and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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