The Triangle probably will get some rain and perhaps a drenching Tuesday, but most of the region is expected to escape much trouble as Hurricane Irma works up the west coast of Florida during the day and then moves into western Georgia.
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Here’s a look at some of the destruction Irma left in her wake.
The massive storm still has a very large wind field with hurricane-force winds extending up to 60 miles.
The whole of the southern tip of Florida has seen high winds, driving rain and storm surges.
Recovery operations are beginning around Florida and beyond even as the weakening storm system continues to dump heavy rains around the South in states including Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee.
Damage appeared to be severe in the Florida Keys, where Irma first came ashore as a category four hurricane with sustained winds up to 215km/h early on Sunday.
Some 3m people live in the Tampa Bay area. And they’re likely to see a large storm surge there, still these high winds, an area that, you know, hasn’t – I mean, no one can prepare for a hurricane quite like that.
Scott also announced that once the Department of Transportation clears road access to Port Everglades and Port Tampa, the Florida Highway Patrol will start to escort fuel trucks to gas stations. The storm damaged power lines and some building cranes.
As Hurricane Irma swept through South Florida, power company officials warned yesterday that restoring electricity to more than 2 million homes and businesses will be a slow and risky process that will take weeks. About 220,000 of those people have ended up in shelters. Most of the outages were in Southeast Florida. The hurricane’s death toll is now up to 25 people, as Irma has battered the Caribbean, Cuba and the Florida Keys. State media reported about 1 million people were evacuated from high-risk flood areas.
“This is obviously not the worst case scenario for Florida overall”, Maue said.
The small French island of St. Barthelemy and the French-Dutch island divided between St. Martin and St. Maarten also were badly damaged.
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Some 6.5 million people, about a third of the state’s population, had been ordered to evacuate southern Florida as the storm approached the USA mainland after pummelling Cuba with 36ft-tall (11m) waves and ravaging several smaller Caribbean islands. Mario Ritter was the editor.
