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Florida wakes up to Hurricane Hermine

Hurricane Hermine roared ashore at 1:30 a.m. Friday near St. Marks in Florida’s Big Bend, pushing a storm surge that swamped the tiny town as it threatened deliver more water across North Florida.

Sustained winds topped 80 mph as the storm made landfall, but quickly slowed to about 70 mph. By 5 a.m., Hermine was located about 50 miles northeast of Tallahassee, moving at about 14 mph and expected to continue weakening, the National Hurricane Center reported.

Hermine was expected to continue up the East Coast on Friday and Saturday, through Georgia and the Carolinas, which also could see heavy rain and dangerous flooding.

The National Weather Service warned that a wide swath of the Gulf Coast, from Long Boat Key, near Sarasota, to the Panhandle could continue to see dangerous weather over the next day.

Much of the region woke up Friday powerless and to a soggy mess. Hours before Hermine arrived, winds knocked down power lines, cutting power to about 150,000. In Tallahassee, the city’s north side lost power before 11 p.m.

Around 6 a.m., the National Weather Service in Tallahassee cancelled the hurricane warning affecting Florida's Big Bend. A tropical storm warning remained in effect for much of the area, including Tallahassee — where peak winds were forecast to reach 25 to 35 miles per hour with gusts up to 45 miles per hour. Storm surges of several feet along the coast and heavy rain inland were expected to continue Friday morning.

In Tallahassee, light rain continued to fall, at times, in the hour before dawn, with the occasional wind gust.

Enough of the worst of the weather had passed through Florida's capital city by early Friday morning that the city of Tallahassee was able to begin clean-up, even as much of the city was still blanketed in darkness.

The city said at 4:30 a.m. on Twitter that it had dispatched electric crews to restore power to the more than 60,000 customers still without it. At close to the storm's peak, the city said as many as 70,000 customers lost power by 2 a.m.

Read more at our news partner, the Miami Herald

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