(NEW YORK) — Hurricane Debby is roaring across Florida as a Category 1 hurricane after making landfall Monday morning.
Here’s what to expect:
Flash flood warnings have been issued from Cedar Key, Florida, to Venice, Florida.
More than 10 inches of rain already fell in the Tampa area and more than 1 foot of rain was recorded just south of Sarasota.
On Monday, Debby will bring very heavy rain from Gainesville and Jacksonville, Florida, up to Savannah, Georgia, where more than 20 inches of rain is possible.
The storm surge will be the highest — up to 10 feet — in Florida’s Big Bend area, from Keaton Beach to Cedar Key.
By Tuesday, Debby is expected to stall over the Southeast, bringing potentially historic rainfall to Georgia and South Carolina. Up to 30 inches of rain is possible through Thursday.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued a rare “high risk” warning for extreme flooding in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina over the next two days.
The rainfall from Debby may approach Georgia’s record of 27.85 inches from Tropical Storm Alberto in 1994.
Debby’s remnants could then move up to North Carolina and Virginia by Friday and this weekend.
(PHOENIX) — Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has requested the Arizona “fake elector” case against him be moved from Maricopa County into federal court, according to court documents filed Wednesday.
The request comes weeks after Meadows asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in his similar effort to move the Fulton County, Georgia, election case against him into federal court.
In Wednesday’s filing, Meadows’ attorneys said their client’s request is “based on recent new Supreme Court authority clarifying the scope of immunity,” citing the court’s recent presidential immunity ruling.
Meadows’ attorneys argued that the case should also be moved from state court because the indictment “squarely relates to Mr. Meadows’s conduct as Chief of Staff to the President.”
The argument is similar to the one Meadows has made for months in his Fulton County case, citing a law that calls for the removal of criminal proceedings when someone is charged for actions they allegedly took as a federal official.
“It is unmistakably clear that the indictment charges Mr. Meadows with alleged state crimes based on acts he took as Chief of Staff to the President of the United States and in the course of his duties in the position,” Meadows’ attorneys said in the filing.
In response to the request, a judge has scheduled an evidentiary hearing for Sept. 5.
Meadows was charged in Arizona, along with 17 others, for fraud, forgery and conspiracy over alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state. He has pleaded not guilty.
Last week, charges were dropped against former President Donald Trump’s former campaign attorney Jenna Ellis in exchange for her cooperation in the case.
Clara McMichael, Sam Sweeney, and Emily Shapiro, ABC News
(ATLANTA) — A Delta jet clipped a smaller plane on a taxiway at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Tuesday morning, tearing the tail off the smaller plane, officials said.
Delta Air Lines Flight 295, which was en route to Tokyo, was taxiing for takeoff when its wingtip hit the tail of Endeavor Air Flight 5526, which was headed to Louisiana, knocking the Endeavor plane’s tail off, according to the Federal Aviation Administration and Delta.
The incident unfolded at the intersection of two taxiways around 10:10 a.m., the FAA said.
No one was injured on either plane, according to Delta and the airport.
“There is minimal impact to airport operations,” an airport spokesperson said in a statement.
“Passengers from one of the aircraft are being bussed from the incident to the concourses,” the spokesperson said. “The second aircraft taxied under its own power to a concourse where passengers will deplane at their gate.”
(NEW YORK) — The NASA astronauts who flew Boeing’s Starliner to the International Space Station (ISS) and will now remain there until next year say they don’t feel let down by the mission.
Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams. who performed the first crewed test flight of Starliner, have been in space since early June. When they launched, they were only supposed to be on the ISS for about a week.
NASA and Boeing officials decided to send Starliner back to Earth earlier this month after several issues and keep Wilmore and Williams onboard until February. They will be sent home on a SpaceX Crew-9 Dragon spacecraft.
When asked if they felt let down by the way the mission turned out, Wilmore said they didn’t.
“Let down? Absolutely not,” Wilmore said during a press conference on Friday. “It’s never entered my mind. It’s a fair question I can tell you, I thought a lot about this press conference … and what I wanted to say and convey.”
He added, “NASA do a great job of making a lot of things look easy. …. That’s just the way it goes. sometimes because we are pushing the edges of the envelope in everything that we do.”
Williams said she and Wilmore are very knowledgeable about Starliner so the problems with the spacecraft were “obvious” to both of them, but she was happy to see it return to Earth.
“I was so happy it got home with no problems,” she said, “We saw it fly away, and then we all got up. The whole crew got up at three in the morning, and we had it up on our iPads, watching it land.”
Starliner landed at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in the early hours of Sept. 7.
Despite Starliner’s issues, NASA officials said Wilmore and Williams would have been safe onboard Starliner if they returned with the spacecraft.
“If we’d have had a crew on board the spacecraft, we would have followed the same back away sequence from the space station, the same de-orbit burn and executed the same entry and so it would have been a safe, successful landing with the crew on board,” Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said at a post-landing press conference.
Stich told reporters last month that NASA will send Dragon to the ISS in September, with only two of the four astronauts assigned to it.
The spacecraft would carry extra spacesuits for Wilmore and Williams. However, the two would remain on the ISS until February 2025, when Crew-9 is set to return to Earth.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
