Hurricane 'Debby' washed more than $1 million worth of cocaine onto a Florida Keys beach

This Monday, authorities reported that the passage of hurricane Debby through the Big Bend region of the Gulf Coast washed more than $1 million worth of cocaine onto a beach in the Florida Keys.

Hurricane Debby, which made landfall as a Category 1 storm with winds exceeding 80 miles per hour, dragged 25 packages of cocaine, each weighing 70 pounds, ashore.

It was a sunbather who discovered the drugs inside a trash bag, among seaweed and other debris washed up by the storm. Upon contacting authorities, Border Patrol seized the packages, whose street value exceeds $1 million.

"Good Samaritan discovered the drugs & contacted authorities," U.S. Border Patrol acting chief Samuel Briggs II reported in a social media post.

Briggs shared images of the duct-tape-wrapped blocks of cocaine, marked with a bright red triangular symbol.

It is not unusual for smugglers to use South Florida beaches as routes to smuggle drugs from South America into the United States. However, this latest find did surprise authorities, who noted that it is unusual for drugs to arrive in Nassau County, an area significantly farther north than the usual destinations for such illegal shipments.

Four deaths from hurricane

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 61 counties as more than 274,000 homes were without power. The storm has already claimed at least four lives, including a 13-year-old boy who was crushed to death when a tree fell on his home.

Meanwhile, Debby continues to move northward, affecting Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, although it has already been downgraded to a tropical storm.