Hurricane Idalia has knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of customers, grounded more than 800 flights and triggered flooding along the Florida coast, far from where it made landfall as a Category 3 storm early wednesday
Idalia’s maximum sustained winds dropped to 110 miles (177 kilometers) per hour about an hour after landfall near Keaton Beach, Florida, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in a 9 a.m. advisory, New York time. Earlier, its winds had reached 130 mph, making it a Category 4 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, before downgrading to a Category 3 by the time it made landfall.
Although Idalia hit a sparsely populated area, it could still cause $10 billion in damage as it moves across northern Florida into Georgia and South Carolina in the coming days, said disaster modeler Chuck Watson by Enki Research.
“There are a lot of mobile homes/manufactured homes in the interior, especially in south Georgia, that will not hold up well in these winds,” Watson said in an email. “The dollar value of this is not going to be that high, maybe $10 billion, depending on how strong Idalia holds as it goes up the coast, but the impact on people is going to be pretty high.”
No storm of this intensity has hit Apalachee Bay, near where Idalia made landfall, with a direct impact since modern record-keeping began in 1851, the National Weather Service in Tallahassee said Tuesday .
Water was rising along the coast as Idalia’s surge came ashore. In Cedar Key, near where the storm made landfall, the tide gauge was 6.8 feet above mean high tide, the hurricane center said.
The Alafia River near Tampa, about 155 miles south of where Idalia made landfall, reached record heights Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service. In small coastal communities, videos of water in the streets have appeared on social media.
A “catastrophic storm surge” is building along the coast of Florida’s Big Bend region, the hurricane center said at 9 a.m.
Idalia will likely keep hurricane-force winds further north in Georgia, which will increase power outages, Maxar meteorologist Anthony Chipriano said. As of 9:50 a.m., 264,614 customers were without power in Florida, according to Poweroutage.us.
Tampa International Airport was closed due to the storm, but other southern airports are also feeling the pressure from Idalia, with 895 flights canceled, according to FlightAware data. More than 100 were canceled heading there from Atlanta, a major transportation hub in the United States.
Idalia is the first major hurricane to hit Florida since last September. That’s when Hurricane Ian slammed into the western part of the state as a Category 4 storm, killing at least 150 people and causing more than $112 billion in damage.
Parts of Florida, Georgia and the eastern Carolinas will likely see up to 8 inches (20.3 centimeters) of rain through Thursday, with up to a foot likely in some isolated areas, the National Hurricane Center said. Flash flooding, both urban and river, is likely, “with considerable impacts,” he added.
A tornado watch has also been issued for parts of Florida and Georgia until 3 p.m. local time Wednesday, the National Weather Service’s Tampa Bay office said on social media platform X.
“If you’re inside, just duck until it passes,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a news conference Wednesday morning. “You don’t want to mess around with those winds. There’s going to be stuff flying everywhere.”
DeSantis expanded an emergency declaration to cover 49 counties, with mandatory evacuation orders for several along the Gulf Coast. President Joe Biden approved federal emergency declarations for Florida, allowing the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate relief efforts. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp also declared an emergency Tuesday.
On its current path, Idalia is expected to miss most of the oil and natural gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Even so, Chevron Corp. transported non-essential personnel from its Blind Faith and Petronius platforms in the Gulf. Martin Midstream said it would temporarily cease operations at its Tampa oil terminal.
The Environmental Protection Agency is waiving summer gasoline volatility requirements in Florida in an effort to increase fuel supplies and keep prices low. The exemption allows fuel with higher volatility to be sold until September 15. Higher volatility fuel can be made from a wider range of normally less expensive components.
Most of the key citrus areas in central Florida should not be seriously affected, said World Weather Inc. President Drew Lerner. Florida is the leading supplier of orange juice to the US.
While some cotton crops could be damaged, along with fruits and vegetables, the main staples of corn and soybeans should be fine, said Don Keeney, also a Maxar meteorologist.
–With assistance from Jim Wyss, Anna Jean Kaiser, Chunzi Xu, Sheela Tobben and Dayanne Sousa.
