Florida braces for ‘extremely dangerous’ Hurricane Idalia

STEINHATCHEE, United States: Hurricane Idalia barreled towards the west coast of Florida on Tuesday, triggering mass evacuation orders and flood alerts as authorities warned the storm could strengthen to “extremely dangerous” levels before landfall.

The US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said Idalia, a Category 1 storm with winds of 85 miles an hour, was churning on Tuesday morning off Florida´s southwest, and bringing tropical storm conditions to western Cuba and flooding in Havana.

Warm Gulf of Mexico waters near 31 degrees Celsius (88 degrees Fahrenheit) are expected to turbocharge Idalia into an “extremely dangerous major hurricane before landfall on Wednesday,” the NHC said.

Major hurricanes are Category 3 or higher on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale, with winds above 110 miles per hour that the NHC says will cause “devastating damage.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis urged those in the evacuation areas along the Gulf coast to go “now.”

“You don´t have to go hundreds of miles,” he told a news conference, urging coastal residents in the 23 counties under evacuation orders so far to get to shelters or hotels that were out of the danger zones.

Almost 150 people were killed last year when Hurricane Ian slammed Florida´s west coast as a devastating Category 4 storm, bringing storm surges and heavy winds that downed bridges, swept away buildings, and caused over $100 billion worth of damage. Idalia is expected to make impact farther north along the coast, in the so-called Big Bend area -- a vast marshy region which, unlike most other coastal areas around Florida, does not have barrier islands.

“We´ve not really had a hurricane strike this area for a long time,” DeSantis said at a Tuesday morning press conference. “You are going to see a lot of debris -- there´s a lot of trees along that track,” added the governor, who has suspended his campaign for president to handle the crisis.

The NHC said in its latest advisory that forecasts were increasingly confident Idalia would “reach the coast of Florida adjacent to Apalachee Bay Wednesday morning,” and could bring “storm surge inundation of 10 to 15 feet above ground level.”