Florida braces for ‘extremely dangerous’ Hurricane Idalia

AFP | Steinhatchee

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

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

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Idalia, a Category 1 storm with winds of 85 miles an hour (140 kilometers an hour), was churning 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 (177 kilometers 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.