If you’re reading this Sunday morning, you’ve probably already awoken to news that Irma has finally made landfall in Florida while we were asleep.
At the last minute Irma was predicted to swing to the west as it came off the northern coast of Cuba, sparing Miami and Ft. Lauderdale of the worst.
But that’s bad news for all the cities on the Gulf side.
There’s still more to watch as Irma continues its path northward, potential gaining energy from the warm Gulf waters, which may increase it back to a Cat 4 storm after having been downgraded early Saturday to Cat 3.
Regardless, the devastation will not be minimal for the more than 1 million residents who’ve evacuated in the last week.
Here’s more from Daily Mail…
Hurricane Irma is once again forecast to hit the Florida Keys as a Category 5 storm, as more than a million people have fled its path and abandoned their homes.
Meteorologists expect the powerful hurricane to hit the Sunshine State between 5am and 7am ET on Sunday.
‘Obviously Hurricane Irma continues to be a threat that is going to devastate the United States,’ Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), said at a press conference Friday morning. ‘We’re going to have a couple rough days.’
The storm was first downgraded from a Category 5 to a Category 4 earlier on Friday morning, but as of 5pm ET on Friday, it is predicted to hit the U.S. as a Category 5. This will only be the fourth time ever a Category 5 has hit US mainland.
As of 6.30pm ET Friday, the hurricane is moving west at 12 mph and located 345 miles southeast of Miami.
Government officials along with the National Hurricane Center have cautioned that Irma is ‘extremely dangerous’ with maximum sustained winds of 155 mph. That’s strong enough to bring down power poles, uproot trees and rip the roofs off of homes.
In preparation for what is predicted to be the most powerful hurricane to hit the United States in years, an estimated 1.4million people have been given mandatory evacuation orders in both Florida and Georgia.
