CHARLESTON, S.C.-
After splashing ashore in Florida without much punch, the remnants of the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season churned northward Wednesday, bringing much-needed rain to the Southeast but also spawning damaging tornadoes.
By early Wednesday, Alberto had weakened from a tropical storm to a tropical depression over South Carolina and all tropical storm warnings were discontinued.
But as it headed northward along the coast, it still pushed nasty weather ahead of it.
At least six small twisters were reported in South Carolina, one in downtown Charleston that broke car windows during the evening rush hour Tuesday and another that caused injures. Wind gusts over 40 mph knocked down trees and power lines in three counties. And a flood watch was in effect for the northeast part of the state, where hail and lightning strikes were reported overnight.
Two to 4 inches of rain were forecast for the Carolinas and parts of Virginia, with heavier rain along the coast.
"These remnant tropical systems, even though it may not be windy at the ground, it's kind of hard to kill the circulation aloft," said National Weather Service meteorologist Brandon Vincent in North Carolina. "The winds above the ground can still be kind of strong."
After last year's 28 named storms and record 15 hurricanes, Tropical Storm Alberto's approach over the Gulf of Mexico caused a brief scare and prompted a call for more than 20,000 people to evacuate Florida's gulf coast. But no serious injuries or widespread damage was reported there, and officials said it was a good tune-up for the long hurricane season ahead.
Alberto's winds were about 50 mph when it came ashore near Adams Beach, Fla., still strong enough to be a tropical storm, but well below the 74-mph threshold for a hurricane.
At 5 a.m. Wednesday, its maximum sustained winds were near 35 mph, 4 mph below tropical storm strength, the National Hurricane Center said.
Instead of a disaster, Alberto's rainfall may turn out to be a blessing for Florida's efforts to battle wildfires and for farmers in Georgia who were worried about drought.
"It's definitely a million-dollar rain," said Joe McManus, a marketing specialist with the Georgia Farm Bureau in Macon. "It could save some cotton and peanut fields."
Farmer Orson Adams, 65, was counting on the rain to help germinate the cotton seeds he planted last month in Douglas, Ga.
"What we've gotten has been slow and it's going into the soil," Adams said. "We've got a chance now to survive."
Officials said the storm also gave them real-world practice on the lessons learned from the slow response to some of last year's storms. Hurricane specialists said they ran into a few computer glitches but nothing that couldn't be fixed before the next storm.
"It was a nice tune-up, a nice warm-up," said hurricane specialist Richard Pasch. Florida's Emergency Management spokesman Mike Stone put it another way: "You can train all you want, but nothing beats the real deal."
In Crystal River, Fla., water was thigh-high in the heart of the town, but many people seemed to accept flooding as part of coastal life–and sighed with relief that it wasn't worse.
"I think overall it could have been worse," said Leslie Sturmer, whose Cedar Key, Fla., neighborhood was briefly cut off from the rest of the state by flooding. "We would have evacuated if there was a serious storm, but this wasn't."
——
Associated Press writers Mitch Stacy in Cedar Key, Fla.; Bruce Smith in Charleston, S.C.; Erin Gartner in Raleigh, N.C.; and Elliott Minor in Albany, Ga. contributed to this report.
——
On the Net:
National Hurricane Center:
