Hurricane Irma could weaken to tropical storm before arrival in Georgia

However, forecasters are warning that swells generated by Irma along the southeastern USA coast could still cause “life-threatening surf and rip current conditions”.

Irma flooded portions of Savannah’s River Street and The Battery, the downtown Charleston neighborhood where the Ashley and Cooper rivers meet.

Though the tropical storm’s eye is moving north-northwest, bands of high winds and heavy rain can extend outward for 415 miles.

FPL expects Irma’s powerful winds and potential flooding to wipe out parts of its infrastructure on the west coast, snap concrete poles and bend metal ones.

And here’s the fully zoomed-out image of Florida from last night. Downed trees and debris littered the roads, he said, but the city did not experience any storm surge like it feared. “The St. Johns River has not seen these flooding levels since 1846”.

The state said Saturday that more than 400 shelters are open, mostly in schools, churches and community centres.

No one was hurt.

In Cutler Bay, a 50-year-old tree was uprooted and fell on top of Arturo Vargas’ home.

Now the entire Georgia coast is under a storm surge warning as Irma continues its destructive march north.

After battering Cuba yesterday, Irma strengthened as it approached the west coast of Florida.

“No way!” Indigo interrupted.

National Hurricane Center says Irma has weakened into a tropical depression. Irma moved onshore in southeast Florida on Friday night, bringing wind gusts between 45 and 55 miles per hour.

“Anyone who didn’t heed the evacuation orders here in Miami Beach, it’s time to bunker down”, Van Dam said.

More than 4 million homes in the state are without power, with parts of Miami (particularly Brickell) and Naples under water. This represents over 59% of all power company accounts in the state, the Florida Division of Emergency Management said.

Warnings of risky storm surges remained in effect through vast swaths of peninsular Florida, where more than six million people had been ordered to flee Irma in one of the biggest evacuations in USA history.

That’s because some islands are extremely hard to access.

Emergency managers there declared “the Keys are not open for business” and warned that there was no fuel, electricity, running water or cell service and that supplies were low and anxiety high. If you are fortunate to have a full tank, you face the great possibility that you will not be able to get gas at your next stop. The Department of Transportation said U.S. Highway 1 was closed in the Keys pending a complete assessment of the bridges.

“It’s just about the biggest ever recorded that hit land, and unfortunately we got it”.

Irma is expected to drop 2 to 5 inches of rain across SC and northern portions of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. But that doesn’t mean all Floridians should try to go back home.

More than two million people were also left without power across the state, which is home to President Trump’s famous resort, Mar-a-Lago, located in Palm Beach on the east side of the state.

An army of utility workers descends on Florida to help restore mass power outages in Irma’s wake.

About 5,000 of the Keys’ 30,000 permanent residents stayed to ride out the storm, Florida Keys spokesman Andy Newman said. The residents and authorities can track Hurricane Irma’s progress to reach to safe areas and head to unaffected areas.

While there have been many Atlantic cyclone seasons with more major hurricanes than 2017, this is the first time on record that two category 4 hurricanes have made landfall in the US.

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