GREENSBORO, N.C. — Debby has been downgraded to a tropical storm as the system has moved inland Monday near the Big Bend of Florida. Debby will impact parts of the Southeast this week. Here in the Carolinas, we need to pay attention and monitor the forecast for changes. The WFMY News 2 Weather Team is tracking it as it slowly gets closer.
There are plenty of crews already in Florida to help with restoring power, and clean up.
According to Duke Energy, there are around 3000 workers scattered across the state to assist.
Duke Energy representative from the Carolinas, Jeff Brooks, said power outages have increased in the Panhandle, and Big Bend area.
He said due to the windy conditions, power restoration has been difficult because its dangerous to put linemen up in the bucket trucks when the wind is that strong.
"We see that in the triad as well when we have major storms that come through. And people say, well, where's the crews? Why aren't they out there? It's really for the safety of those crews that we can't put those buckets in the air until those winds die down. I came from the staging site in Monticello where we had about 350 line and tree workers. They are just now getting to deploy," Brooks said.
Brooks said so far, power has been restored to about 170,000 customers in Florida, but there's still 95,000 left to go.
Now that the system inches closer to our state, we checked in with the Wyndham Tournament Director to see if any plans have been made ahead of this weekend.
The 85th annual tournament kicks off this week and goes into Sunday.
Tournament Director, Bobby Powell, said though it isn't ideal, the tournament could go into Monday if the weather prevents players from finishing on Sunday.
Powell explained, "if we are delayed for a significant amount of time they can make it up over the weekend, and hopefully you can get back on track by the end of the day on Sunday. If not, like we've seen before, sometimes we have to go to Monday. Hopefully we won't get there."
The PGA tour will make the final call on the tournament later in the week.
Our meteorologists said, in the past, slow moving tropical storms or hurricanes have dumped over 10 inches of rain in the Carolinas on multiple occasions in recent years. This could be another one of those times.
Here in the Piedmont of NC as of right now we could see some rain or even wind if Debby is able to wiggle further enough inland. For now, we will keep eyes. If you're heading to the Carolinas coasts next week pay extra close attention. The weather could be wet or worse, but still too early to cancel or anything like that.