Why Planning for a Hurricane Is So Crucial in Valdosta

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(TNS) – Lowndes County is only about 80 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. While some people may think the Azalea City is too far inland to be impacted by a hurricane, they would be wrong.

“With Valdosta being inland, the chances of extreme impacts favor heavy rain and flooding more than wind,” said Mike Doll, senior meteorologist with the private forecasting firm AccuWeather.

The hurricane season for the Atlantic and the Gulf began June 1 and ends Nov. 30; the National Weather Service predicted an average storm season with 12-17 storms strong enough to earn names — tropical storms and hurricanes.

The weather service said five to nine of those storms could become hurricanes (with winds of 74 mph or higher,) and one to four of them could be major with winds of 111 mph or more).

How strong the storm is at landfall and how fast it moves has a sizable effect on how much damage can be done inland, Doll said.

“With any tropical cyclone, you can get a lot of rain over a 24-48 hour period,” he said.

So many factors affect hurricane development that it’s difficult to make projections, but given a hypothetical situation — a Category 3 hurricane (winds from 111-129 mph) moving ashore in the Florida Panhandle with a forward speed of 15 mph — Doll said Valdosta could get 10 inches of rain or more.

Slow-moving hurricanes can offer more of a problem than fast ones, as they can loiter over an area while continuously dumping rain, he said.

“Hurricane Harvey (a Category 4 storm in 2017) was slow-moving and brought more than 40 inches of rain to Texas0, Doll said.

Tornadoes are another spinoff from hurricanes more likely to strike inland than near the coast, Doll said. As a general rule, twisters are most likely to form to the east of a storm’s track, he said.

In Lowndes County, keeping abreast of the latest weather news is key, said Meghan Barwick, the county’s public information officer.

“In the event of a major storm, we would monitor and push out the information we receive from the National Weather Service office in Tallahassee,” she said. The weather service has already briefed the county on the upcoming storm season.

Lowndes County’s Emergency Management Agency is in charge of the county’s weather operations; the county has an emergency operations center than can be opened as needed on a case-by-case basis, Barwick said.

“Residents need to know the risks and prepare now, not waiting for the storm,” she said. That includes assembling emergency kits with food, batteries, cash and other vital items, as well as evacuation and communication plans as well as plans for taking care of pets, she said.

Monitoring storm news is important, she said, and can be accomplished in several ways:

— NOAA Weather Radio. The federal government operates a nationwide chain of radio stations transmitting weather news and alerts which can be picked up on special radios available at local stores. The transmitter for South Central Georgia is located in Lowndes County near Hahira.

— Code RED alerts. Lowndes County operates a system that sends weather alerts directly to phones. Sign-up is through the county’s website, lowndescounty.com.

— Monitoring local media websites.

— Text alert systems. The Valdosta Daily Times operates a system that sends weather alerts by text to phones.