CARRABELLE, FLORIDA - Hurricane Hermine made landfall in Florida's Big Bend area early Friday as the first hurricane to hit the state in more than a decade.
The Category 1 storm hit just east of St Marks around 1.30am EDT with winds around 128.7 kilometres per hour, according to the US National Hurricane Center.
Projected storm surges of up to 3.7 metres menaced a wide swath of the coast and an expected drenching of up to 10 inches of rain carried the danger of flooding along the storm's path over land, including the state capital Tallahassee, which hadn't been hit by a hurricane since Kate in 1985.
As of 2am EDT Friday, Hermine was centred about 56.3km southeast of Tallahassee, Florida, and was moving north-northeast near 22.5 mph. The storm was expected to drop back down to a tropical storm before pushing into Georgia, the Carolinas and up the East Coast with the potential for heavy rain and deadly flooding.
The last hurricane to strike Florida was Wilma, a powerful Category 3 storm that arrived on Oct 24, 2005. It swept across the Everglades and struck heavily populated south Florida, causing five deaths in the state and an estimated $23 billion in damage.