Florida braces for 'life-threatening' Hurricane Hermine
Tropical Storm Hermine strengthened into a hurricane Thursday and steamed toward Florida's Gulf Coast, where people put up shutters, nailed plywood across store windows and braced for the first hurricane to hit the state in over a decade.
The National Hurricane Center said the storm's winds reached about 75 mph in the afternoon, just above the 74 mph hurricane threshold.
Hermine was expected to blow ashore late Thursday or early Friday along the state's Big Bend, the mostly rural and lightly populated corner where the Florida peninsula meets the Panhandle, then push into Georgia, the Carolinas and up the East Coast as a tropical storm, with the potential for heavy rain and flooding.
