Heavy rains hit Florida Panhandle; 2 journalists killed

Subtropical Storm Alberto rumbled inland Monday after its Memorial Day strike on the U.S. Gulf Coast, driving holiday weekend beachgoers away as heavy rains pelted wide areas of the Southeast amid a rising flood threat.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami downgraded Alberto to a tropical depression Monday evening just hours after it made landfall in the Florida Panhandle. As of the 11 p.m. EDT advisory, Alberto was located about 50 miles west-northwest of Dothan, Alabama. Its top sustained winds were down to about 35 mph.

But the flooding threat persists in the hours and days ahead as the huge system continued to dump heavy rains.

Authorities so far hadn’t attributed any deaths or injuries directly to Alberto, but near Tryon, North Carolina, a television news anchor and a photojournalist died after a tree fell on their vehicle as they reported on weather on the fringes of the huge system.

Station WYFF-TV of Greenville, South Carolina, said one of its anchors, Mike McCormick, and photojournalists, Aaron Smeltzer, were killed. McCormick and Smeltzer had just interviewed Tryon Fire Chief Geoffrey Tennant. Minutes later, Tennant got a call “and it was them.”

Tennant said the tree became loose in ground already saturated by previous rains.

Alberto’s ragged core made landfall near Laguna Beach in the Florida Panhandle on Monday afternoon. Between four and eight inches of rain were expected in the panhandle, eastern and central Alabama and western Georgia. Isolated deluges of 12 inches also were possible.

Forecasters said the center of the depression was moving to the north near 12 mph. The storm was expected to pick up speed and move over Alabama later in the night and early Tuesday as it spreads storms around the South.

The system is then expected to spread rains over the Tennessee Valley on Tuesday and push later in the week into the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes region.

A subtropical storm like Alberto has a less-defined and cooler center than a tropical storm, and its strongest winds are farther from its center.