Hurricane Bill: 2 People Dead, Downgraded To Post-Tropical Storm

by Yuliya Talmazan | August 24, 2009 at 09:18 am

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Hurricane Bill, the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, made landfall in Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland as a Category 1 hurricane on Sunday afternoon, causing much less damage than was originally predicted. Road floods and power outages topped the damages.

In the United States, two people were killed. At Maine’s Acadia National Park, a 7-year-old girl was killed when a powerful wave washed away three people, including the girl’s father and another 12-year-old girl. The tragedy happened at the Thunder Hole, popular among visitors for being able to hear waves crashing against the rocks really loud there. At Florida’s New Smyrna Beach, 54-year-old swimmer was washed ashore dead.

Hurricane Bill has now moved back into the northern Atlantic and has been downgraded to a post-tropical storm.

The storm delivered steady downpours and high winds as it moved into Canada Sunday night, forcing flight cancellations and temporary road closings along Nova Scotia's Atlantic coast. Bill ripped branches from trees in Halifax and elsewhere, and there was some localized flooding. But no major damage had been reported in the province by late Sunday, according to Craig MacLaughlan, head of Nova Scotia's Emergency Management Office.

Flights are back on schedule at the Halifax airport and Marine Atlantic has resumed its ferry run between North Sydney and Port Aux Basques, N.L.

The Canadian Hurricane Centre downgraded Bill from a tropical storm to a post-tropical storm as it grew weaker and moved away from Canada’s East Coast and into the Atlantic Ocean.

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