Tropical depression Mindy dumps rain along coast

Published 12:00 am Friday, September 10, 2021

VALDOSTA, Ga. (AP) — Tropical depression Mindy dumped rain along the Georgia and South Carolina seacoasts Thursday during a trek across land before moving well out over the Atlantic Ocean.

Mindy was a brief-lived tropical storm that had formed Wednesday in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. The storm made landfall Wednesday night in St. Vincent Island, Florida and then was downgraded to a depression that dumped rain across the Florida Panhandle and into south Georgia and South Carolina.

The storm was in the Atlantic on Thursday evening about 110 miles  east-southeast of Charleston, South Carolina, and moving east-northeast at 23 mph  with top sustained winds of 35 mph, forecasters said.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said gradual weakening was expected and Mindy is forecast to become a remnant low sometime today.

Florida’s Big Bend area was already saturated from rain dumped by Hurricanes Elsa and Ida. Some residents in low-lying Dixie County have had to move out of their homes, which were flooded before Mindy brought more rain.

Diane Van Hook has been living at a hotel for weeks because her property is flooded and there’s no electricity in her home.

“There’s no hope of going home anytime soon because of how deep the water is,” Van Hook told WGFL-TV in Gainesville on Wednesday. “There’s no place for us to even walk you know. I had to remove my horse from the property, and I lost my chickens.”