Tropical Storm Beryl edges closer to southeast US coast

Tropical Storm Beryl closed in on the southeastern U.S. coast on Sunday, dumping rain and whipping up heavy surf from northeastern Florida to South Carolina. The second named storm of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season is expected to make landfall later on Sunday with possible wind gusts to hurricane force, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. The powerful pack of thunderstorms has prompted tropical storm warnings along the coast in northern Florida, Georgia and parts of South Carolina, disrupting Memorial Day weekend plans for some beachgoers and travelers. At 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT), Beryl was packing sustained winds of 65 miles per hour and located about 85 miles east-southeast of Jacksonville, Florida, the hurricane center said. Beryl was moving west toward the U.S. coast at 10 mph, with tropical storm force winds near the coast of northeastern Florida. The storm's approach led some vacationers in Georgia to leave early, said Alden Alias, the front desk manager at The King and Prince Hotel on St. Simons Island, a popular coastal resort town. "The waves are pretty big," she said. "The winds are starting to pick up." City officials in Jacksonville canceled Memorial Day ceremonies scheduled for Monday and closed some local parks as the storm drew closer. "I am encouraging all area residents to stay indoors and off the streets as the storm hits," Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown said. Computer forecast models show Beryl moving on an eventual path back out over the Atlantic after coming ashore, posing no threat to U.S. oil and gas installations in the Gulf of Mexico. Forecasters say it is expected to weaken to a depression by Monday night. The storm is forecast to dump as much as 4 to 8 inches, with as much as 12 inches in some areas, and threaten rip currents and possible coastal flooding, the hurricane center said. Beryl formed off the South Carolina coast late on Friday as a subtropical storm, a reference to the storm's structure. Subtropical storms usually have a broader wind field than tropical storms and shower and thunderstorm activity farther removed from the storm's center. It was reclassified as a tropical storm on Sunday. Beryl followed the season's first storm, Tropical Storm Alberto, which was the earliest-forming Atlantic storm since 2003. The Atlantic hurricane season officially runs from June 1 to November 30.