With the ground saturated from rainfall, even the winds of Debby after it was downgraded to a tropical storm were able to knock down trees and power lines in Jacksonville, Florida.
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00:00Well there are several spots along Jacksonville's waterfront that remain
00:04highly vulnerable to flooding over the next few days. One of these areas is
00:08Memorial Park where AccuWeather's Leslie Hudson was earlier and she's she joins
00:13us there now with more. Leslie? Hey there yeah it is you know considered one of
00:21the most vulnerable spots in the state of Florida not just even here in
00:25Jacksonville. Now you can see the bridge behind my shoulder a beautiful night
00:28despite all of the steady rain and the wind we've been dealing with but just
00:32over the bridge is Memorial Park and Riverside Drive where there is such
00:37devastation when they do get tropical events. Now let me show you some video
00:40from earlier today when I was in Memorial Park. From last year the city
00:44officials learned that they needed to do something to try and mitigate the
00:48incredible waves that come with the St. Johns River when there is a tropical
00:53system headed their way. So they put up those floodgates you can see those white
00:57barriers that really haven't done a whole lot in terms of stopping any type
01:02of flooding waters. I noticed that when I was down there but at least it's
01:06something and it's helping to redirect some of that water to the storm drains
01:10and that is helping. The other thing is that I noticed today is that the crews
01:13are out really really quickly. Now we've had several large trees down here in
01:17Jacksonville. Last time I checked there was about 10,000 people without power in
01:21the metro area. I know there's much more than that statewide. Last time I checked
01:25it was over a quarter of a million people without power. But it's because
01:28we've had so much rain here in this state these trees are easily getting
01:32uprooted and then they're pulling the water drains underground up top and
01:37that's creating another problem on top of the flooding conditions. So crews are
01:41all over the state in the hotel I'm at. There are hundreds of linemen and power
01:45utility workers in this hotel trying to get out on the roads quickly when
01:51everything starts to turn south. They have been out and about. I've seen them
01:54all day today but we talked to one viewer to one resident who had to check
01:58Debbie out for himself. It's been a normal day but also when I was at work
02:05this morning it was pretty dead. Like people are taking this pretty seriously
02:10because of how severe it is right now and how much wind and rain and all that
02:15it is. Now most of the people have stayed indoors and tried to heed what the
02:23officials have said. They have stayed to stay off the roads. Of course there's a
02:27tropical storm. There has been a tropical storm warning up in this area and of
02:30course we're expecting some more of those rain bands tonight. For now it is a
02:33slow steady rain here. We've seen the flooding and we'll see how Mother Nature
02:37shakes up with Debbie's impact tomorrow. For now we're reporting in Jacksonville.
02:41I'm Leslie Hudson back to you. All right thanks so much for that report there
02:44Leslie and gradually as the center of the storm will gradually pull away from
02:50Jacksonville to the north we will begin to see some gradual improvements but
02:54we're going to really be concerned about Georgia and the Carolinas moving forward
02:57with life-threatening flooding and some spots could pick up feet of rain over
03:01the coming days and this system is lingering near the southeast coast. We're
03:05not totally done with this in Northeast Florida but the worst of this will be
03:08shifting into areas like coastal South Carolina where Governor Henry McMaster
03:12is urging residents to stay alert. We do have a quite a storm coming. It's not a
03:17hurricane wind but those categories 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 those measure only the wind.
03:24They do not reflect the water at all but we've got a lot of water coming and we
03:29had a lot of water in 2015 as you remember we had a lot of water in 2017
03:34and the results are overcoming all that took weeks sometimes or sometimes even
03:42longer but but we are prepared we have everyone is on deck