Tropical storm has East Coast military bases in its crosshairs

U.S. military installations on the East Coast could start experiencing rough weather by Friday.

Tropical Storm Hermine shows the could blow through the Florida Panhandle, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia starting late Thursday night or early Friday morning, according to the National Weather Service.

That means bases such as the Army’s Fort Stewart, Georgia: the Marine Corps’ Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; Naval Air Station Norfolk, Virginia; and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, could feel the effects of the storm.

National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen advises service members and their families in bases within the storm’s path not to take the coming weather lightly.

"There will be flooding and power outages," he told Military Times on Wednesday.

Hermine is expected to drop between 5 and 10 inches of rainfall in parts of northwest Florida through Friday, with some areas getting up to 20 inches, according to an advisory Wednesday from the National Hurricane Center. The storm could then dump between 4 and 8 inches of rain in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina on Saturday with up to 10 inches possible in some parts.

The storm currently has sustained winds of 45 miles per hour and it could be near hurricane strength by the time it makes landfall, the advisory says. Tropical-storm-force winds will extend up to 125 miles from the storm’s center.

The National Weather Service determined the most likely path for the storm by using Hurricane Hunter aircraft and other data sources, said service spokeswoman Susan Buchanan. The latest storm track is current as of 4 p.m. and the National Hurricane Center updates its map every six hours, she said.