Tropical Storm Debby is on track to dump heavy rains on New Jersey after battering the Southeast

Tropical Storm Debby continued its slow progress across the southeastern United States on Monday night after causing widespread flooding and killing four people in Florida. And although it is located more than 800 miles from New Jersey, the storm has the potential to dump heavy rain on the state later this week and early into the weekend.

That’s the latest prediction from forecasters, who say New Jersey also faces a threat of street and river flooding from a separate storm system on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Forecasters said the first round of rain will be brought on by a cold front moving in from the northwest that is expected to slow down or stall near the mid-Atlantic coast. While the front is not related to Tropical Storm Debby, southerly winds could push tropical moisture northward, increasing the amount of potential rain affecting New Jersey over the next few days.

Flash flooding is possible in urban areas and poor drainage areas on Tuesday and Wednesday, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a flood watch for 15 New Jersey counties: Bergen, Burlington, Camden, Essex, Gloucester, Hudson, Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, Ocean, Passaic, Salem, Somerset and Union.

A flood watch is in effect from 2 p.m. Tuesday through noon Wednesday in Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Passaic and Union counties, and from 5 p.m. Tuesday through 8 a.m. Wednesday in all other counties.

Tropical Storm Debby Update

As of 5 p.m. Monday, Tropical Storm Debby was centered over northern Florida and moving slowly north-northeast toward southern Georgia, according to the National Hurricane Center. The storm was centered about 30 miles southeast of Valdosta, Georgia.

Debby, which made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region on Monday morning as a Category 1 hurricane with maximum winds of 80 mph, had sustained winds of up to 50 mph as of 5 p.m.

The storm’s biggest threat remains its immense amount of moisture and slow movement, which is allowing bands of heavy rain to fall in the same general areas of Florida and Georgia, forecasters say.

The National Hurricane Center says 12 to 16 inches of rain could drench southeastern Georgia and the South Carolina coastal plain over the next five days, and southern and southeastern sections of North Carolina could be hit with up to 12 to 16 inches of rain over the next five days.

Six to a foot of rain is possible across a wide swath of central North Carolina, according to the latest forecast map from the National Hurricane Center.

Some forecasters in the New Jersey region say the remnants of Tropical Storm Debby could bring 3 to 8 inches of rain to New York State and the Philadelphia metropolitan areas later this week and early this weekend. However, there is a slight chance that the heaviest rain bands could move farther east over the Atlantic Ocean rather than directly over land.

The exact path of the storm and its remnants will not be known until Debby passes through Georgia and the Carolinas, a journey that could be lengthy because the storm is expected to stall or move very slowly between Tuesday morning and Thursday morning.

Debby blamed for four deaths in Florida

Florida authorities say four people, including two teenagers, have died in incidents involving Debby.

A 13-year-old boy was killed when a tree fell on a mobile home near Gainesville, and a car crash linked to stormy weather claimed the lives of a 38-year-old woman and a 12-year-old boy, according to reports from NBC News and 7-News in South Carolina.

Also, the driver of a semi-trailer truck died after his vehicle went out of control on a wet road and the cab plunged into a canal near Interstate 75 near Tampa, 7-News reported.

More than 300,000 utility customers remained without power in Florida and Georgia on Monday afternoon, down from a peak of more than 350,000, according to PowerOutage.us and Georgia Electric Membership Corp.

Current weather radar