Florida is in the path of a potential tropical storm for the first time this hurricane season.

Residents could see heavy rain and strong winds from the system by the end of the week and into next week, according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management. It’s still too early to determine where the storm might hit.

Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday that residents could feel the effects of the storm into early next week. He encouraged everyone to prepare now by having at least seven days of disaster supplies.

The weather system, which should soon be Tropical Storm Isaias, was dumping heavy rain across the Leeward Islands of the eastern Caribbean on Wednesday, potentially unleashing „life-threatening” flash flooding and mudslides. This includes Puerto Rico and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands.

After moving near Puerto Rico on Wednesday night, the system will affect the Dominican Republic and Cuba before making its way to the U.S. mainland, possibly Florida, by the weekend.

President Donald Trump approved an emergency declaration request from Puerto Rico’s governor, who also activated the National Guard.

The National Hurricane Center said the system, dubbed Potential Tropical Cyclone Nine, is expected to strengthen before it makes landfall in the Dominican Republic on Thursday, although the center cautioned it’s still unclear what the storm would do in upcoming days.

“The details of the long-range track and intensity forecasts remain more uncertain than usual since the system does not have a well-defined center and it is expected to move near or over portions of the Greater Antilles later this week and move near or over Florida this weekend,” the center said.

„While this system could bring some rainfall and wind impacts to portions of Cuba, the central and northwest Bahamas, and Florida later this week and this weekend, it is too

soon to determine the location or magnitude of those impacts,” the center said.

Tropical storm warnings were issued for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Hurricane names: From Arthur to Wilfred, here’s the list of hurricane names for the 2020 season

Officials in Puerto Rico expressed concern about the potential for landslides and flooding and noted the U.S. territory is struggling with a spike in coronavirus cases while also still recovering from 2017’s devastating Hurricane Maria and a string of earthquakes earlier this year that damaged or destroyed hundreds of homes in the island’s south.

At a news conference, Gov. Wanda Vázquez predicted the storm would cause power outages. The governor added that more than 300 shelters across the island were prepared to receive people if needed and that more than 130,000 face masks were available.

At 5 p.m. ET, the center of the storm was about 320 miles east-southeast of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The system was moving west-northwest near 23 mph. That general motion, with some slight reduction in speed, is expected over the next few days.

If Isaias forms, it would be another record-breaker for a season that hasn’t even reached the typical peak of hurricane activity. The current record for the earliest “I”-named storm is Irene on Aug. 7, 2005.

Contributing: The Associated Press; Cheryl McCloud, Treasure Coast Newspapers; Kimberly Miller, The Palm Beach Post

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tropical storm weather forecast Florida: Isaias could hit this weekend

As the first rains and winds from a potential tropical storm hit Puerto Rico on Wednesday afternoon, many on the island were figuring out their last-minute preparations.

Gas stations in San Juan had more customers than usual as people filled up their cars. At one garage, a man stored a yellow gasoline-powered generator, the kind used to power essentials such as fridges, in the back of his van. People crowded supermarkets to buy food and other supplies. The streets of La Milla de Oro, a financial district, were mostly empty. Plaza Las Américas, the Caribbean’s largest mall, was slated to close at 5 p.m.

As of Wednesday, Puerto Rico is no longer in the path of potential Tropical Storm Isaias, although tropical storm conditions are “likely” through the night. The weather system has struggled to morph into a storm due to several factors, ranging from its large size to dry winds and clouds of Sahara dust. But even though the tropical system does not present anywhere near the threat of a monster storm such as Hurricane Maria did in 2017, many Puerto Ricans still felt anxious and nervous. Community leaders reassured people, saying they are more prepared than they were three years ago.

Maria left an indelible mark on how Puerto Ricans think about, experience, and prepare for storms and hurricanes. A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey conducted a year after Hurricane Maria found that 9 percent of all Puerto Ricans surveyed reported receiving mental health help as a result of the storm. In a study that surveyed around 96,000 Puerto Rican schoolchildren, 45.7 percent reported damage to their own homes, and 7.2 percent exhibited “clinically significant” symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

On Wednesday, “PTSD” was a trending topic on Twitter in Puerto Rico, with over 20,000 tweets that included the word.

Three community leaders across Puerto Rico spoke to the Miami Herald about how their neighborhoods, communities and towns have prepared for the storm. They spoke about the psychological impact that Hurricane Maria had, but also highlighted the deep resilience and self-reliance their communities had developed after the hurricane. And all three spoke about how, in the wake of perceived government abandonment and neglect, individuals, communities, and groups prepared for natural disasters like this.

‘Anxiety that has not ended’

Mark Martin Bras lives in Vieques, an island municipality of the Puerto Rican archipelago that Hurricane Maria ravaged. The municipality’s electrical grid was still dependent on generators for over a year after the storm. Its hospital, destroyed by the hurricane, is still not operational.

Martin Bras, who has lived in Vieques for over two decades, is a board member of Vieques Love, a nonprofit created after Hurricane Maria when the need for better infrastructure and services in the town became apparent. The organization provides immediate relief and fosters community development. It also works closely with the local and state government.

Martin Bras said that even if people were nervous, the community was more prepared now to weather storms.

“There wasn’t chaos or long lines” at supermarkets, pharmacies, or gas stations, he said.

Martin Bras told the Herald that since Maria, community organizations have pushed efforts to make the island more resilient and ready for disasters. Vieques, which was largely cut off from the world after Maria, now has a robust radio communication network of community groups in place.

“We are connected to the Virgin Islands, to mainland Puerto Rico, to different official agencies … all connected to a network that allows us to communicate … which didn’t exist before Maria,” he said. “It’s like night and day.”

He also added that the island now has three “resiliency centers,” which cannot shelter people, but provide water, food, communications, and first aid supplies. Still, Martin Bras said, much needs to be done when it comes to infrastructure and public services such as water, electricity, and medical services.

“The necessary changes have not been made for this island to be functional. Not even talking about emergencies and disasters,” he said. These bigger infrastructure issues cause the community a lot of anxiety, especially during hurricane season.

“Maria created anxiety that has not ended,” said Martin Bras. “It would be much easier to fix that anxiety if we knew we were going to be as taken care of as well as other municipalities on the island,” he added, alluding to Vieques’ geographic isolation and limited resources compared to other Puerto Rican towns.

‘We have learned with the passage of time’

Jessica Rotger Muller, a 44-year-old mother of seven, is a community leader in Barrio Amelia in a municipality on the northern coast of the island, Cataño. She described her community as tightly knit, a place that when the need arises, “everyone helps each other.”

Like Martin Bras, Rotger Muller said that she thought her community was “more aware” and better prepared for potential storm Isaias as well as the 2020 hurricane season.

“I think we have more knowledge about how these [storms] can affect us and how we can respond,” she said. She also noted that a lot of people were preparing for the storm at the San Juan-area Walmart and Sam’s Club, where she went on Wednesday to purchase items at the last minute.

“A storm is coming tomorrow, and tomorrow you can come by the neighborhood and you will notice that the areas are flooded because they are in flood zones. However, the sewers are clean, there are no people outside, and there is no garbage outside the houses,” Rotger Muller said. “You can see that we have learned with the passage of time.”

Rotger Muller said that Hurricane Maria had greatly affected her neighborhood and her family. She suffered damage to her home, which she had moved into two weeks before, right before Hurricane Irma grazed Puerto Rico. She lost her stove, her fridge, the furniture of one of her rooms, and a fence in her yard. Rotger Muller was grateful there wasn’t more damage.

Her family is close, so they didn’t find it difficult to pass the time playing games or sitting outside their door laughing and making jokes. Still, according to Rotger Muller, her family was the last in Barrio Amelia to be plugged back into the electrical grid. It was difficult for her youngest son to see their neighbors have electricity while they spent more days in darkness.

“I don’t care how insignificant an atmospheric event might be, we were marked by Maria,” she said. “And during hurricane season, people still talk about their experiences” with the hurricane.

‘We know who our neighbors are’

In Loiza, a northeastern coastal town that is home to one of Puerto Rico’s largest Black communities, Maricruz Rivera Clemente could hear the strong gusts of winds and rain Wednesday against the windows and doors of her home.

Rivera Clemente is a community leader of Piñones, a beachfront barrio of Loiza. She is also the founder of Corporación Piñones Se Integra, COPI, a local community group that promotes Puerto Rico’s Black heritage and is dedicated to preserving the municipality’s nature and ecosystems.

Since June, COPI has been cleaning the Torrecilla Canal, which connects the Piñones Lagoon and the Torrecilla Lagoon. Hurricane Maria filled the Torrecilla Canal to the brim with fallen mangroves, broken tree limbs, and other debris. The six-person strong brigade has cleaned around 200 meters of the canal. They have been cutting fallen trees in the canal as well as trimming trees on its shores to ensure that the water flows. Cleaning the canal is essential because when it gets clogged, the waters can overflow and inundate Piñones.

Like the Vieques and Cataño community leaders, Rivera Clemente emphasized the self-reliance and strong survival skills of her neighborhood and town. Hurricane Maria was the best illustration, she said, that the local and federal government cannot respond to the needs of its citizens in times of disaster.

“Because of that absence of resources and commitment on behalf of the government, in Piñones we have always done things without the government,” she said. “What resources we do have, we fought for, but we don’t stop. We search for resources, we invent them, we make them.”

This self-management was not unique to Loiza and Piñones, Rivera Clemente said. Communities across Puerto Rico had to figure out how to move forward on their own. She said that Hurricane Maria’s legacy is still felt today.

“Some people were left with a great emptiness. Hurricane Maria affected us not only physically, but emotionally,” she said.

The community leader added that Piñones’ location, in the middle of a mangrove forest, protected the neighborhood from flooding and wind, and made people feel more secure.

But more than anything, she said, people in the community know they can rely on each other. Rivera Clemente said that she has been regularly in touch with other community leaders across Loiza to see how prepared their communities were for the coming storm and to check in on how they were feeling.

“We identify people who are in need and distribute help. … We know who our neighbors are,” she said. “We are able to get out of difficult situations and [we are] triumphant because those social dynamics are powerful. Really powerful.”

Starting Thursday at 5 p.m., the state of Florida will temporarily close state-run COVID-19 testing sites „in anticipation of impacts” from a potential tropical storm that’s currently lashing the Caribbean with wind and rain. The Florida Division of Emergency Management announced the closure on Wednesday, the same day the state set a new record for single-day coronavirus deaths.

The state runs 162 testing sites in all but two of Florida’s 67 counties, according to the state department of health’s website.

All state-supported testing sites have tents, equipment and other „free standing structures” that are not able to withstand tropical storm force winds, the department said in a press release. If those objects are lifted during the storm, they „could cause damage to people and property if not secured.”

The department said the sites will remain closed until they can safely be reopened, but added that all are expected to reopen by August 5 at the latest.

In a series of tweets, the department encouraged people with coronavirus symptoms to „receive a self-swab test at state-supported drive-thru sites” prior to the closings, adding that those people „will be prioritized” and will receive their results within 72 hours.

County health departments will continue to offer free COVID-19 tests, emergency management said.

(1/2) In anticipation of Potential Tropical Cyclone Nine, all state-supported testing sites will be temporarily closed starting Friday. Sites will begin reopening on Tuesday, with all sites being reopened by Wednesday, Aug. 5 at 8 a.m. Learn more – https://t.co/OmtuDQvB8H

— FL Division of Emergency Management (@FLSERT) July 29, 2020

But some counties are also closing their testing sites. Miami-Dade County, which makes up roughly a quarter of the state’s total coronavirus cases, according to state data, announced that all drive-thru and walk-up testing sites in the county will be closed from Friday „until further notice.” In Palm Beach County, which has the third-highest amount of cases in the state, sites will be closed at least on Friday and Saturday. Some may open again on Monday, depending on the trajectory of the storm, the county website said.

The National Hurricane Center said that the storm is expected to reach the southern part of Florida by Friday night, potentially as a tropical storm.

The storm is predicted to produce heavy wind and rain as it moves through Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and other islands in the Caribbean.

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