Tropical Storm Mindy Makes Landfall in Florida

Rain was pouring down on the Florida Panhandle as Tropical Storm Mindy made its way across the state early Thursday morning. The storm made landfall in St. Vincent Island on Wednesday night. Mindy was expected to cause as much as 6 inches of rainfall across the Florida Panhandle and portions of southern Georgia and South Carolina through Thursday morning, the National Hurricane Center said. Scattered flash, urban, and small-stream floods are possible. The storm on Thursday morning was about 20 miles east-northeast of Tallahassee, Fla., and moving northeast at 20mph with maximum sustained winds of 40mph, forecasters said.

The center of Mindy is expected to move into the Atlantic Thursday morning, the AP reports. The tropical storm warning is in effect from Mexico Beach, Fla., to the Steinhatchee River to the east. That area is about 300 miles east of southern Louisiana, where Hurricane Ida made landfall late last month. Mindy is the 13th-named storm of what has been another busy Atlantic hurricane season. According to a tweet from Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach, the average date for the 13th-named storm from 1991-2020 was Oct. 24. Klotzbach says that since satellite surveillance began in 1966, there have only been four other years with 13 or more named storms by Sept. 8: 2005, 2011, 2012, and 2020.

(More tropical storms stories.)