Gusts from Idalia are sweeping across Florida on Wednesday where the hurricane made landfall, causing “catastrophic” and life-threatening flooding. Idalia made landfall near Keaton Beach at 7:45 a.m. local time on Florida’s northwest coast as a Category 3 hurricane with extremely high winds up to 125 mph (205 km/h), the National Hurricane Center said. (NHC).
“Disastrous marine flooding events are underway along the coast and dangerous gusts are moving into the interior and north of Florida,” the institute said.
After briefly moving to category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which includes 5, Idalia has been downgraded to category 1 and its gusts now blow up to 150 km / h, according to the latest NHC bulletin.
In Steinhatchee, a small town of a thousand inhabitants located on the coast 30 km south of Keaton Beach, the main street, almost deserted, is completely flooded and seems to be an extension of the neighboring river.
2 meter waves
Other cities have seen water levels rise at high speed, such as Cedar Key, located on the coast, which reported waves of more than 2 meters, a record level for the area.
“It’s flooded, everything’s flooded,” Shely Boivin, the manager of the Beach Front motel in the resort, told CNN. “I just saw picnic tables coming down the street in the rushing flood.”
Clearwater or Tampa also saw their streets and their port flooded, the inhabitants having to move in meters of water with their belongings on their heads. “The flooding we are experiencing now is nothing compared to what will happen in a few hours,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor warned on CNN, explaining that the tide was expected to rise in the next few hours bringing with it meters of additional water.
The waters could rise 5 meters
This hurricane is “powerful and if you are at home, take shelter until it passes,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned Wednesday at a press conference. people unable or unwilling to evacuate their homes in time.
More than 286,000 homes were thus without electricity Wednesday morning in Florida, according to the specialized site Poweroutage.us. American meteorologists have warned against rising waters that could go up to a range of 3 to 5 meters in places.
Ron DeSantis had called on people in evacuation zones in 23 counties along the coast the previous day to leave “immediately”, adding that the hurricane would likely be the most powerful to hit the region in more than a century. .
US President Joe Biden, who spoke with Ron DeSantis, like him running for president in 2024, had approved a declaration of a state of emergency on Monday, released federal aid and pre-positioned some of the staff of help with natural disasters. Tampa International Airport closed and flights were suspended on the east coast of the United States, plagued by another hurricane, Franklin, which came from the Atlantic.
Scientists have warned that the storms are getting more powerful as the planet heats up due to climate change.