ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Catfish were spotted swimming along residential Florida driveways and yards ahead of Debby’s landfall as a Category 1 hurricane.
Joanna Mack and her husband were amazed to see two catfish swimming in the road outside their Pinellas Park home on Sunday.
The couple believes the fish were probably washed out of a nearby pond by heavy rain.
“We have lived here for 10 years and have never seen this before,” Joanna Mack said.
The couple used shovels and fishing rods to help push the fish toward storm drains and into deeper water.
“When the rain stopped, we went out and found them and put them back from whence they came,” said Mack, who believes the fish came from a pond close to her house.
Dan Ciarletta posted footage on social media of a catfish struggling to swing under shallow floodwater outside his home in St. Petersburg.
“Catfish in my driveway as streets turn into rivers,” he said on X.
The National Hurricane Center upgraded Debby to a Category 1 hurricane on Sunday evening.
The hurricane made landfall Monday morning near Steinhatchee, about 70 miles southeast of Tallahassee, with winds of up to 80 mph.
The landfall location was only 15 miles away from where Hurricane Idalia made landfall in Keaton Beach one year ago.
As the storm began its slow crawl toward the Southeast coast, Debby had already dumped up to a foot of rain in some parts of Southwest Florida.
Debby weakened to a tropical storm by mid-morning Monday and is now passing over Georgia and the Carolinas.
Life-threatening flooding will continue Tuesday, particularly across eastern South Carolina as the center of Debby slowly slides off the Georgia coast and back over the water.
Starting Friday, the storm will finally get a kick north, and heavy rain will spread all the way into the Northeast, the FOX Forecast Center said.
Pockets of significant flooding will be possible Friday and Saturday from the Carolinas all the way into Maine.
