Hurricane Idalia intensified overnight and is now a Category 4 storm heading toward Florida’s Gulf Coast. It has wind speeds of 130 miles an hour and is expected to make landfall around 8 a.m Eastern, bringing catastrophic waves and potentially submerging the coast in up to 16 feet of flooding. You can track the storm’s path here.
The strongest part of the storm will be over Florida’s Big Bend, where the state’s long peninsula curves to meet its Panhandle. Though that region is sparsely populated, the storm is expected to affect much of the southeastern United States: Officials issued evacuation orders in counties across West and Central Florida, and governors in Georgia and the Carolinas declared states of emergency because of concerns about heavy rains and potential tornadoes.
More than half of Florida’s western coastline is at risk of life-threatening storm surges, as rising ocean water floods towns. “You’re not going to be able to survive that,” Gov. Ron DeSantis warned. Here are the latest updates:
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More than 50,000 customers in Florida are already without power. Tallahassee is preparing for outages that could last days, expecting its strongest storm in decades.
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Heavy rains doused Tampa, Florida’s third-largest city, overnight. Much of the city closed in preparation. See what has shut down.
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Schools canceled classes, performers postponed concerts and museums closed across the Southeast, too.
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Children in the Naples, Fla., area huddled in hallways yesterday during a tornado warning.
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The Florida National Guard is fully mobilized, with more 55,000 soldiers and airmen either deployed or deploying, and help is coming from as far away as California.
Communities along hundreds of miles of coastline boarded up windows, sandbagged buildings and emptied grocery store shelves of water. Many people have fled Cedar Key, an island city that is home to roughly 700 people. “My family has been here for many generations,” said the mayor, Heath Davis. “We haven’t seen a storm this bad, ever.”
Hot water, stronger hurricanes
Idalia (pronounced ee-DAL-ya) is the first major hurricane to threaten the U.S. mainland this Atlantic season, which is expected to be more active than usual. That’s partly because of human-driven climate change, which appears to have contributed to record-breaking ocean temperatures off the Florida coast.
Warmer air and water feed a hurricane’s winds. “There’s never been as much fuel available to a hurricane as Idalia has available to it,” said Daniel Gilford, a meteorologist at the research group Climate Central. Warming can also cause hurricanes to intensify rapidly and increase how much rain they drop, worsening flooding.
Idalia is expected to hit some parts of Florida that have yet to fully rebuild after Hurricane Ian, which devastated the state’s southwest coast last year.
After slamming into Florida, Idalia is expected to weaken. Forecasters predict it will head north into Georgia, then lash the southeastern U.S. before heading back out to sea.
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