© ReutersEmergency services responded to more than 300 calls overnight. Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum estimated as many as 100,000 area residents were without electricity Friday morning
The Category 1 storm hit just east of St. Marks around 1.30am EDT with winds around 80mph, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
Projected storm surges of up to 12 feet 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 had not been hit by a hurricane since Kate in 1985.
Florida Governor Rick Scott, who declared a state of emergency in 51 counties, said 6,000 National Guard members were ready to mobilize once the storm passed.
Hermine - downgraded to a tropical storm - weakened as it moved into southern Georgia, and was 55 miles southwest of Savannah, moving northeast while packing sustained winds of 55pm as of 10am EDT on Friday.
After pushing through Georgia on Friday, Hermine is expected to move into the Carolinas on Saturday and up the East Coast with the potential for drenching rain and deadly flooding in New Jersey and New York City over the Labor Day weekend.
Heavy rain and winds were moving into South and North Carolina as the storm advanced, the National Hurricane Center said.
Hermine is forecast to hover near or off the Mid-Atlantic or Northeast seaboard, braced for strong winds and coastal flooding, according to The Weather Channel.
Its predicted path shows it will move through parts of Savannah, Georgia on Friday and then up through Charleston, South Carolina.
It will continue through Wilmington, North Carolina on Saturday, pushing further northeast, appearing to hit parts of West Virginia, before hovering over the North Atlantic.
Currently, a tropical storm watch is in effect in coastal parts of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and the Virginia Tidewater.
A tornado watch has also been issued by the Storm Prediction Center and will remain until 8am EDT for parts of northern and west central Florida, along with southern Georgia and southern South Carolina.
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, bringing soaking rain and high winds.
As of 6.30am on Friday, there was an estimated 22 million people under either a tropical storm watch or tropical storm warning, according to The Weather Channel.
Schools in 35 of the Florida's 67 counties were closed, meanwhile state offices were closed in 37 counties. Scott said 253,000 people were without power.
Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis said 100 Florida National Guard personnel were activated, with 34,000 ready to deploy from elsewhere in the United States.
President Barack Obama has asked FEMA administrator Craig Fugate to keep him updated on the situation 'and to alert him if there are any significant unmet needs', White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
'Local, state and federal officials have been working diligently to prepare for these storms and have resources on hand to respond to them as necessary,' he added.
© ddpUSA/RexDebris left from the storm surge fills a street in Cedar Key after hurricane Hermine passed through the area
Capt. Chip Wildly, director of Marion County's emergency management agency, said the man's body was discovered around 7.35am by people who were reporting to work. No further details were immediately available.
Scott said no other deaths or major injuries have been reported.
While damage is still being assessed in the Sunshine State now that Hermine has moved out of Florida and into Georgia, Scott said about 70 per cent of the homes in Tallahassee were without power Friday morning.
The number rises to 99 per cent in Wakulla County on the marshy Gulf of Mexico coastline south of Tallahassee where Hermine made landfall early Friday.
He also noted there's 'a lot of tree damage in Tallahassee, and a lot of road damage.'
In Tallahassee, high winds knocked trees onto several houses injuring residents inside, according to fire-rescue spokesman Mike Bellamy. He said an unknown number were taken to area hospitals with injuries that were mpt thought to be life-threatening.
Drivers also encountered fallen trees and limbs across roadways, with few traffic lights working, creating hazards for motorists who did not realize they had to stop at intersections. A large oak tree fell across the carport area of a Whataburger restaurant and another tree next to a preschool fell in the opposite direction, hitting a car parked nearby.
Bellamy said his agency responded to more than 300 calls overnight.
At Florida's Keaton Beach, just south of the state's Big Bend where the peninsula meets the Panhandle, about two dozen people waited on a road just after sunrise on Friday while trying to get to their homes.
Police had the road blocked because of flooding.
Taylor County Commissioner Jody DeVane said several homes were damaged.
New father Dustin Beach, 31, rushed to Keaton Beach on Friday from a hospital in Tallahassee where his wife had given birth Thursday night to a girl.
'When my wife got up this morning she said, "Go home and check on the house. I need to know where we're going after we leave the hospital,"' Beach said.
Cindy Simpson was waiting near her car, hoping her beach home and boats had made it.
'It's a home on stilts so I put everything upstairs. We have two boats in the boat house and I hope they're still there,' she said.
While there were no other reports of injuries, emergency crews worked 'non-stop' overnight, rescuing 18 people from rising flood waters in Florida's Pascoe country, and several families in Hernando County, Scott said.
Pasco County Fire Rescue and sheriff's deputies used high-water vehicles during the rescue and those pulled to safety were taken to a nearby shelter.
The Sunshine Skyway Bridge that spans Tampa Bay remained closed on Friday morning because of high winds.
In Wakulla County, south of Tallahassee, a couple suffered minor injuries during the storm when they drove into a tree that had fallen in the road, County Administrator Dustin Hinkel said early Friday.
He said storm surge of eight to 10 feet damaged docks and flooded coastal roads. At least seven homes were damaged by falling trees, said Scott Nelson, the county's emergency manager.
As the storm barreled across southeastern Georgia, more than 107,000 customers were reported without power across Georgia as crews worked to repair damage left by Hermine.
On its current path, the storm could dump as much as 15 inches of rain on coastal Georgia, which was under a tropical storm watch, and the Carolinas.
Forecasters warned of "life-threatening" floods and flash floods.
Georgia Power reported on its online outage map shortly before noon on Friday that about 30,000 were in the Savannah area and more than 20,000 others were in the Brunswick area near the coast.
The utility reported that more than 11,000 customers were without power in hard-hit Lowndes County.
Nearly 86,000 of those without power were Georgia Power customers.
Georgia Electric Membership Corp.'s online outage map showed about 21,700 customers of other utilities, many of them in rural areas, were without power shortly before noon.
Lowndes County spokeswoman Paige Dukes said crews were dealing with fallen trees and snapped power lines, but no injuries had been reported.
Winds exceeding 55mph had been recorded in the county, with four to five inches of rainfall, she said.
In South Carolina, the mayor of Charleston, which saw historic flooding less than a year ago, is urging residents there to 'batten down the hatches, hunker down and stay put' as Hermine moves through the state.
Mayor John Tecklenburg said on Friday that the city is blessed that it is not dealing with a major hurricane but officials are taking Hermine seriously.
He said as Hermine approaches, the city is expecting serious winds and rainfall that can lead to flash flooding. He said the city distributed 3,000 sandbags on Thursday.
It has been almost a year since rainfall from what has been described as a 1,000-year-storm inundated South Carolina and caused widespread flooding in Charleston that prompted officials to block people from entering the downtown area.
As of midmorning on Friday, a city map of street closings showed only one street had been blocked by flooding from Hermine.
As Hermine made landfall in Florida, the governors of Georgia and North Carolina declared emergencies in affected regions.
Emergency officials in North Carolina said they have helicopters, boats and high-clearance vehicles on standby in case of flooding or other tropical storm problems.
State emergency management director Michael Sprayberry said on Friday morning that swift water rescue teams and National Guard and law enforcement officers with high-clearance vehicles are staged in the eastern part of the state. Helicopters are also ready to respond.
Gov. Pat McCrory has made an emergency declaration for 33 eastern counties as Tropical Storm Hermine approaches.
There could be high winds and six to eight inches of rain in some areas along the coast, North Carolina officials said.
The forecast for North Carolina has improved, but officials are still concerned about whether the storm could stall over an area and cause flooding, McCrory said.
Speaking on Thursday before the hurricane struck, Gov. Rick Scott said: 'The most important thing we all must put in our minds is that this is life threatening.
'We have not had a hurricane in years, people have moved here and we have visitors.'
'You can rebuild a home, you can rebuild property, you cannot rebuild a life,' he said, adding: 'We are going to see a lot of flooding.'
Tallahassee resident Tom Duffy, 70, had said he was heading to the neighboring state of Alabama for the night to avoid the devastation.
'We've dodged bullet after bullet after bullet,' he said, but added that Hermine had taken 'dead aim' at the city.
In Carrabelle, on the coast just 60 miles southwest of Tallahassee, Courtney Chason was keeping an eye on the storm surge as docks and boat houses were slowly being battered as the storm approached last night.
'I've never seen it this high, it's pretty damn crazy. I've been in this area for 30 years but I've never seen it like this,' she said. 'I hope it doesn't get any higher, we need lots of prayers.'
Hurricane Hermine was the fourth hurricane of 2016 in the Atlantic basin, and was the first time one had hit Florida in 11 years.
The last hurricane to hit Florida was Wilma in October 2005, which killed a total of 62 in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, Cuba, and Florida, including five in the Sunshine State itself.
The category 5 hurricane had wind speeds of up to 183mph and caused an estimated $23billion in damage in Florida. It is ranked as the fifth costliest storm in US history. To date it is the most recent major hurricane to make landfall in the US. The U.S. has only recorded four less powerful hurricane strikes in the past seven years: that's the fewest in any seven-year stretch since records began in the 1800s, according to USA Today.
On Thursday, Scott had said his top concern was storm surge, which has the potential to leave people trapped in their homes, according to USA Today.
The forecast of rough weather prompted Scott to declare a state of emergency on Wednesday, as many school districts along the Gulf Coast canceled after-school activities and ordered students to stay home on Thursday. On Thursday, he ordered state government offices in 51 counties to close. The order included the state capital Tallahassee, home to tens of thousands of state workers.
The city, which is located roughly 35 miles from the coast, has not had a direct hit by hurricane in 30 years.
Residents were out in force on Thursday morning as they prepared for the storm and stores were running low on bottled water and flashlights.
City crews were struggling to keep up with demand for sand with sandbags.
Emergency management officials in Franklin County issued a mandatory evacuation notice for people living on St. George Island, Dog Island, Alligator Point and Bald Point, The Tallahassee Democrat reported.
Residents in other low-lying areas prone to flooding were also being asked to evacuate.
Cities such as Tallahassee and Orlando had offered sandbags to residents to protect homes and businesses from flooding.
Some airlines were even reportedly waving flight change fees in the path of the storm.
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