Irma is now a category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with sustained winds of 125 miles per hour, and is located along the northern coast of Cuba.
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Now the entire Georgia coast is under a storm surge warning as Irma continues its destructive march north.
The storm’s maximum sustained winds were downgraded to 85 miles per hour and WSB-TV meteorologist Karen Minton said more weakening is expected.
“I would call it a down payment, and that’s what it was, and FEMA burning probably half a billion a day”, he told CNN.
That’s because wind from the east side of Irma would be blowing toward Tampa, pushing water from the bay inland and raising the height of the storm surge, he said.
As Irma has fallen apart, its wind field has expanded, Okulski said.
Statewide, an estimated 13 million people, or two-thirds of Florida’s population, remained without power.
The National Weather Service confirmed it had never before issued a tropical storm warning for Atlanta, where wind gusts could reach 55 miles per hour (88 kph). By late morning, few businesses in St. Petersburg and its barrier islands had put plywood or hurricane shutters on their windows, and some locals groused about the change in the forecast.
Even before the hurricanes, FEMA was having to deal with more than 120 large wildfires in the West that have blanketed smoke across Oregon, Washington and California as well as Idaho and Montana. He still had power.
By emphasizing that citizens should “get out quickly” we can only assume this meant officials were preparing for the worst of the worst. “And then, I think we’re OK, knock on wood”.
Irma devastated much of Marco Island, off the southwest coast of Florida, leaving it with no electricity or clean water.
Miami International Airport, one of the busiest in the country, halted passenger flights through at least Monday.
Despite officials calling for more than 6 million people in Florida and Georgia to evacuate in advance of Irma’s storm surge and fierce winds, some around Florida are choosing to stay, a rite of passage for many in the state who boast about the storms they weathered: Camille, Andrew, Katrina and others.
Flash flooding will also be a problem as a large portion of Florida will see over 10 inches of rain.
As terrible as the financial burden will be to rebuild and recalibrate, that’s not even the beginning of the emotional and mental toll that Irma has already taken on hurricane victims.
Six deaths in Florida have been blamed on Irma, along with three in Georgia and one in SC.
A weakened Irma spread misery around the Southeast on Monday, triggering coastal flooding in parts of Georgia and SC while dumping heavy rains around the region. It flooded streets and coastal areas, swamped homes, uprooted massive trees, cast boats ashore, snapped power lines and toppled construction cranes. “It’s frightful, what we saw”. “It’s like being on a ship”.
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Roberts is said to have an abundance of Chinese food, a case of bottled water, and a near-priceless view of the action from his 17th-floor condo on the Gulf front. At its peak, it slammed through Puerto Rico on September 6, as a Category 5 storm, with a historic windspeed of 185mph – and managed to maintain almost that same level of intensity as it blew through the Dominican Republic and Turks and Caicos.
