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Pedestrians dash across the intersection of Greene and Duval streets in Key West The Key West Citizen via PA Images

Elsa weakens to tropical storm as it threatens Florida coast

A hurricane warning was in effect for a long stretch of coastline, from Egmont Key to the Steinhatchee River.

LAST UPDATE | 7 Jul 2021

ELSA HAS WEAKENED to a tropical storm as it threatened Florida’s northern Gulf Coast after raking past the Tampa Bay region with strong winds and heavy rain.

State governor Ron DeSantis the storm was forecast to come ashore sometime between 8am and 9am today.

A hurricane warning is in effect for a long stretch of coastline, from Egmont Key at the mouth of Tampa Bay to the Steinhatchee River.

“We ask that you please take it seriously,” the Republican governor told reporters in Tallahassee.

“This is not a time to joyride because we do have hazardous conditions out there.”

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries in the Tampa Bay area, which is highly vulnerable to storm surge.

The most powerful winds were forecast to remain just offshore from the beach towns west of St Petersburg.

Elsa’s maximum sustained winds stood at 70mph early today. Its core was about 60 miles south-west of Tampa.

It is moving north at 14mph, according to the US National Hurricane Centre.

Forecasters said Elsa would slice across inland north Florida as a tropical storm with strong rains and wind, then move on to Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia before heading out in the Atlantic Ocean by Friday.

Schools and government offices in the Tampa area were closed and most public events postponed as Elsa approached yesterday.

Tampa mayor Jane Castor, however, predicted hockey’s Stanley Cup finals game between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Montreal Canadiens would be played as scheduled tonight.

Tampa International Airport suspended operations at 5pm on Tuesday and planned to resume flights at 10am today following a check for any storm damage, according to its website.

Duke Energy, the main electric utility in the Tampa Bay area, said in a statement it had about 3,000 employees, contractors, tree specialists and support personnel ready to respond to power outages in the storm’s aftermath.

Additional crews are being brought in from other states served by Duke.

Earlier yesterday, Elsa swept past the Florida Keys but spared the low-lying island chain a direct hit.

Still, there were heavy rains predicted in the Keys through today, along with strong winds.

The storm also complicated the search for potential survivors and victims in the collapse of a Miami-area condominium on 24 June. Despite that challenge, crews continued the search in the rubble of Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida, on the state’s south-east coast.

In Georgia, a tropical storm warning was posted along the portion of the coast of Brunswick, with the US National Hurricane Centre saying tropical storm conditions with sustained winds of up to 50mph are expected in parts of south-east Georgia.

“Right now, we’re basically looking at a cloudy, rainy and windy day,” Glynn County emergency management agency director Alec Eaton told the Brunswick News.

“I feel confident we can sit down and let it pass over us without any major impacts. Hopefully.”

To the north in South Carolina, emergency officials are watching Elsa, but no evacuations were ordered during the peak summer beach tourism season.

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    Mute Ariana
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    Mar 27th 2017, 7:05 PM

    This must be one of the hardest things to deal with as a parent.

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    Mute Stephen Harding
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    Mar 27th 2017, 7:08 PM

    @Ariana: That your son is a terrorist and a murderer?

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    Mute Deborah Behan
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    Mar 28th 2017, 11:13 AM

    @Elle Belle: he converted to Islam his mother did not and she is as much a victim as the other families. My heart goes out to all the people devastated by this one man’s actions.

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    Mute Just Me
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    Mar 27th 2017, 7:29 PM

    At the end of the day, she did’nt send him out to murder those people. It’s not her fault.

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    Mute Fred O'Connor
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    Mar 27th 2017, 8:22 PM

    It would be great if the Journal and other publications would stop publishing the photos and life stories of mass killers. They commit these atrocities for attention. The next mass killer will expect the same attention. You can still report on the attacks and the victims.

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    Mute Chris lynch
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    Mar 27th 2017, 10:04 PM

    @Fred O’Connor: 100% agree with you Fred. I couldn’t give a rats ass about the man or his family.

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    Mute Gerard Henry
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    Mar 27th 2017, 8:47 PM

    Europe wil burn if they don’t take tougher measures against these isil people .they know who they are and how dangerous they are but chose to do nothing until after they attack.when one is positively identified the next move is to take him out of the picture

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Mar 27th 2017, 9:01 PM

    @Gerard Henry: by all accounts he’s not actually an “isil person” just an a$$hole wanting to justify his a$$holery

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    Mute Jimmyjoe Wallace
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    Mar 27th 2017, 9:47 PM

    @Dave O Keeffe: he’d being seeing a psychiatrist about his urges to kill, and he wasn’t a very strict Muslim himself, apparently. He was a psychopath and not really a Jihadist I don’t think.

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    Mute Dave O Keeffe
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    Mar 28th 2017, 5:37 PM

    @Jimmyjoe Wallace: like the deathbed conversion to Catholicism.

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    Mute Jlocoroco
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    Mar 27th 2017, 9:53 PM

    Isn’t she dead sound

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