By: Kevin  Wang

Boosted by the warming planet, Debby rapidly grew in wind speeds, going from a 45-mph tropical storm to an 80-mph, category 1 hurricane. Hurricane Debby made landfall in Florida early in the morning on August 5th. The National Hurricane Center warned that the storm will affect Florida with “potentially historic” rainfall, high winds, and “life-threatening” storm surges. The storm will extend further than Florida, according to Fox Weather, “By midweek, the storm is expected to dump extreme amounts of nearly 2 feet of rain on parts of Georgia and South Carolina.”

As the hurricane’s winds ripped through the state, more than 200 thousand homes and businesses experienced power outages. After making landfall, hurricane Debby started weakening back into a tropical storm. The storm is forecasted to move towards the Southeast coast of Florida, with large rainfall accompanying Debby as it moves. “The main threat will be flooding, both from storm surges and heavy rainfall,” relayed CNN, “Freshwater flooding, which is caused by rainfall, has become the deadliest impact of tropical systems in the last decade.” The governors of Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia have all declared a state of emergency and urged residents to prepare for the storms.

CNN reported that storms need 4 main conditions to grow larger: warm water, moist air, warmth, and good upper-level winds. One ingredient Debby had lots of was the warm water from the Gulf of Mexico. The warm water provided Debby with enough energy to become larger despite the dry air and bad upper-level winds. Global warming caused by fossil fuels is making storms such as Debby more likely to grow stronger in a short amount of time, which makes it harder and harder to prepare for storms.