A weakened Natemostly spares Mississippi
Flooding, power outages reported but no catastrophic damage or lives lost.
Hurricane Nate brought a burst of BILOXI, MISS.— flflooding and power outages to the U.S. Gulf Coast before weakening rapidly Sunday, sparing the region the kind of catastrophic damage left by a series of hurricanes that hit the southern U.S. and Caribbean in recent weeks.
Nate — the fifirst hurricane to make landfall inMississippi since Katrina in 2005 — quickly lost power, with itswinds diminishing to a tropical depression as it pushed northward into Alabama and toward Georgia with heavy rain. It was a Category 1 hurricanewhen it came ashore outside Biloxi early Sunday, its second landfall after initially hitting southeastern Louisiana on Saturday evening.
The storm surge from the Mississippi Sound
littered Biloxi’smain beachfront highway with debris and flflooded a casino’s lobby and parking structure overnight.
By dawn, however, Nate’s receding flfloodwaters didn’t reveal any obvious signs of widespread damage in the city where Hurricane Katrina had leveled thousands of beachfront homes and businesses.
No storm-related deaths or injuries were immediately reported.
More than 100,000 residents inMississippi and Alabama were without power Sunday morning, although some were starting to get electricity restored. About 6,800 customers lost power in Florida, Gov. Rick Scott said.
Mississippi’s Gulf Coast casinos got approval to reopen inmidmorning after closing Saturday as the storm approached.
Sean Stewart, checking on his father’s sailboat at a Biloxi marina after daybreak, found another boat had sunk, with its sail still fluttering in Nate’s diminishing winds. Stewart was relieved to fifind his father’s craft intact.
“I got lucky on this one,” he said.
BeforeNate spedpastMexico’s Yucatan Peninsula late Friday and entered the Gulf ofMexico, it drenched CentralAmerica with rains that left at least 22 people dead. ButNate didn’t approach the intensity of Harvey, Irma and Maria— powerful storms that left behind massive destruction during2017’ s exceptionally busy hurricane season.
“We are thankful because this looked like it was going to be a freight train barreling through the city,” said Vincent Creel, a spokesman for the city of Biloxi.
The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the four hurricanes that have struck the U.S. and its territories this year have “strained” resources, with roughly 85 percentof theagency’s forces deployed.
“We’re still workingmassive issues in Harvey, Irma, aswell as the issues inPuerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and now this one,” FEMA Administrator Brock Long told ABC’s “This Week.”
Nate initiallymade landfall Saturday evening in Louisiana, but fears that it would overwhelmthe fragilepumping system in New Orleans proved to be unfounded. The storm passed to the east of New Orleans, and Mayor Mitch Landrieu lifted a curfew on the city known for its all-night partying.
In Alabama, Dauphin Island Mayor Jeff Collier said he woke up around 3 a.m. Sunday to discover knee-deep water in his yard. Although some homes and cars on the island had flooded, Collier said he hadn’theardofanyoneneeding rescue.
“We didn’t think it would be quite that bad,” he said. “It kind of snuck up on us in the wee hours of the morning.”
At landfall in Mississippi, the fast-moving storm had maximum sustained winds near 85 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. Nate steadily weakened after its fifirst landfall in a sparsely populated area of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.
As of 11 a.m., the center of Nate was near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, with maximum sustained winds of 35mph. The hurricane center said the depression was moving to the north- northeast near 24 mph.
Natewas expectedtobring 3 to 6 inches of rain to the Deep South, eastern Tennessee Valley and southern Appalachians through Monday. The Ohio Valley and central Appalachians could also get heavy rain. A wind advisory was in effffffffffffect until 7 p.m. CDT (8 p.m. EDT) for the Tennessee Valley.
Biloxi city employees worked before dawn to clear Highway 90, where sand, logs and even a large trash bin had been washed onto the four-lane, beachfront road.
Despite the debris, there was little to no visible damage to structures. A handful of businesses had reopened before dawn, and the storm surge that washed across the highway had receded by 6 a.m.
MississippiDOTcrews had to remove over 1,000pumpkins blown onto Highway 90 in Pass Christian, west of Gulfport.
Willie Cook, 75, spent his morning chopping down a pecan tree that fell in his backyard. He said Nate was nothing like Katrina, which pushed 8 feet of water into his east Biloxi house.
“The wind was blowing, but it wasn’t too rough,” Cook said of Nate.
Storm surge flflooded the parking structure of the Golden Nugget casino in Biloxi. Creel, the city spokesman, said there were no immediate reports of flflooding on the flfloors of any casinos.