Hurricane Hermine in Tallahassee (2016)

Hermine made landfall around 1:30 a.m. EDT on September 2, 2016, on the Big Bend coast just east of St. Marks, near the Wakulla-Jefferson County line, according to a National Hurricane Center update.

That bulletin put the center about 5 miles east-southeast of St. Marks and about 25 miles south-southeast of Tallahassee, with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph and a minimum central pressure of 982 millibars. The NHC's tropical cyclone report calls Hermine a Category 1 hurricane and the first hurricane to make landfall in Florida since Wilma in 2005, and Leon County's after-action report adds that it was the first hurricane to directly hit Apalachee Bay since Hurricane Alma in 1966.

The final NHC report says Hermine weakened quickly once inland and became a tropical storm by 0800 UTC, 4 a.m. EDT, about 25 nautical miles east-northeast of Tallahassee, an hour before the 5 a.m. advisory listed it as a tropical storm northeast of the city.

The highest Tallahassee winds in the NHC's Hermine report were a sustained 41 knots and a gust to 56 knots, both below hurricane force.

Those readings came from a WeatherSTEM anemometer on top of a parking garage on the Florida State University campus, about 40 meters above the ground.

Leon County's after-action report describes wind gusts of over 60 mph and sustained tropical storm force winds lasting approximately six hours in Leon County, and says the county received only about 5 inches of rain, far less than early forecasts had suggested. Before landfall, NHC Advisory 19 said hurricane-force winds extended up to 45 miles from the center and tropical-storm-force winds up to 175 miles, a radius that took in Tallahassee as the eye approached Apalachee Bay. Leon County Emergency Management monitored the storm for 18 days, activated the Emergency Operations Center partially on August 31 and fully on September 1, and with the City of Tallahassee distributed over 30,000 sandbags from eight sites, more than the previous three years combined.

Forecasters warned of 4 to 7 feet of surge from Indian Pass to the Ochlockonee River and 6 to 9 feet from the Ochlockonee River to Yankeetown, the stretch that includes the Wakulla County coast south of Tallahassee, in NHC Advisory 20.

The NHC report records that inundation of 2 to 4 feet above ground occurred west of the landfall point from St. Marks westward to Cape San Blas, in Wakulla, Franklin and Gulf counties, and that the NOS gauge at Apalachicola measured a storm surge of 4.17 feet above normal tide levels. In Wakulla County, the report says, 91% of electric customers lost power, a higher share than in Tallahassee.

About 65% of City of Tallahassee electric customers, 75,000 in all, lost power, plus 20,000 customers in the rest of Leon County, and the NHC called it the city system's most significant damage since Hurricane Kate in 1985.

The Leon County report says that by Wednesday, September 7, five days after the storm, service was back for approximately 90% of City customers and nearly all Talquin customers in Leon County, ahead of the schedule both utilities had announced. Nearly all City customers were restored by Friday, September 9, with remaining outages generally tied to damage on customers' own service lines. Mutual aid for the City came from Lakeland Electric, JEA, the Kissimmee Utility Authority, Beaches Energy, the City of Bartow, the Orlando Utilities Commission, Keys Energy, Gulf Power and the Lafayette Utilities System in Louisiana, working from mid-day September 2 until September 11; the City more than tripled its field workforce, and Talquin drew on 11 other electric cooperatives and three contract companies. The report says no accidents occurred in Leon County during the restoration.

Residents were frustrated by the pace of power restoration amid rumors that outside help had been refused, and the Leon County after-action report found that state communications about that help were unclear.

The report's Finding #64 says communications from the State EOC and Governor Scott regarding assistance with cut and toss operations were unclear and counterproductive to response and recovery, and that FDOT representatives should have contacted the Leon County EOC rather than City staff about available resources. It also records state denials of county mission requests before landfall, including one for 20,000 sandbags that the FDOT office in Midway had identified as available. On restoration itself, Finding #67 concludes that City of Tallahassee Utilities and Talquin Electric followed industry guidelines, restoring the transmission system first, then substations, then neighborhood circuits, and the report says the City was steadfast that it used as much mutual aid as it could safely use.

Hermine left more than 200,000 cubic yards of debris collected by Leon County Public Works and its contractors, and FEMA later declared Florida Hurricane Hermine a major disaster, DR-4280-FL.

The after-action report says downed trees damaged hundreds of homes across Leon County and blocked roads, and that 40 City and County staff completed a countywide initial damage assessment in two days, which made Leon County eligible for FEMA Individual Assistance. The county and city waived building permit fees and delayed some inspections for licensed repair work. The Public Safety Complex, home of the Emergency Operations Center, ran on generator power for 25 hours without disruption. FEMA lists the declaration date as September 28, 2016, with an incident period of August 31 to September 11, 2016.

Leon County's main structural change was bringing emergency management back under the County Commission year-round, a policy initiative its Hermine after-action report recommended in December 2016.

The report noted that a 1999 interlocal agreement had shifted day-to-day oversight of Leon County Emergency Management to the Sheriff, and that most Florida counties, 57 of 67, place it under the commission, reporting to the County Administrator. Its other major initiative was a joint City of Tallahassee and Leon County review of public infrastructure, from buildings to electric facilities, along with tree protection and maintenance practices. The county's 2017 Leon County In Review later described Hurricane Irma as its first disaster since Emergency Management was realigned with the County organizational structure.

Last verified: October 18, 2026. For this page the four NHC Hermine bulletins, the NHC tropical cyclone report, the Leon County Hurricane Hermine after-action report, FEMA's DR-4280 page and the county's 2017 year in review were each fetched again and compared line by line.