Pasco County School District Announces Friday Status

LAND O' LAKES, FL — Pasco County public school students are scoring an extra-long Labor Day weekend courtesy of Hurricane Hermine. The school district announced late Thursday that classes have been canceled on Friday, Sept. 2.

The district said concern about potential flooding and unsafe wind conditions prompted the decision.

“I ask everyone to take precautions and not to put their lives at risk by venturing out during the hurricane,” Superintendent Kurt Browning said in a statement.

Friday’s closing also impacts the PLACE childcare program. Schools will resume normal hours on Tuesday, Sept. 6.

See also: Hurricane Hermine Forms Off Florida's Gulf Coast; May Swing Up East Coast

The National Hurricane Center reported that Hurricane Hermine was located about 175 miles west of Tampa at 3 p.m. Thursday. The storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 75 mph and was moving north-northeast at 14 mph. It is expected to make landfall along Florida's northern Gulf Coast or in the Big Bend area sometime late Thursday or early Friday. It will be the first hurricane in Florida since 2005's deadly Hurricane Wilma made landfall in the Sunshine State.

As of Thursday afternoon, tropical storm force winds were extending outward from the storm up to 185 miles to the northeast and southeast of the center, forecasters say.

On its present track, Hurricane Hermine is expected to cut across northern Florida Friday before heading toward Georgia and South Carolina. The storm is anticipated to then move through parts of North Carolina early Saturday morning before continuing in a northeasterly direction that could bring it in contact with Virginia and Maryland late in the weekend.

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