‘Subtropical’ storm Beryl to douse South’s Memorial Day
A satellite image taken by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association shows hurricane Bud about 110 miles off the coast of Mexico on May 25, 2012.
Subtropical storm Beryl, the second named storm of the 2012 hurricane season, is expected to make landfall on the Georgia coast on Sunday.
Beryl is predicted to bring rain and wind to the South for Memorial Day weekend, a holiday that marks the informal start of summer.
Subtropical storms behave more erratically than traditional tropical storms and hurricanes, which are characterized by bands of clouds rotating around an "eye" of calm air, reported the Weather Channel. Storms like Beryl tend to have their most destructive storms and winds furthest from the center, whereas hurricanes have the fiercest weather at the eye wall.
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"In all likelihood, the strongest winds will be confined to the coastal areas and could occur anywhere in the warning area," the National Weather Service wrote on its website.
The storm has already brought "unusually" high tides to Florida's northern coast; surf conditions on Georgia's lower coastal plain and South Carolina's Lowcountry are extremely dangerous, the Los Angeles Times reported.
After landing in Georgia, the storm is expected to sharply veer northeast and continue up the coast, into South and North Carolina.