Monstrous Michael strikes Florida coast

CATEGORY 4 HURRICANE INTENSIFIES AS IT MAKES LANDFALL WITH 249 KM/H WINDS

Extremely powerful Hurricane Michael crashed into Florida’s northwestern Panhandle coast yesterday, flooding towns and ripping up trees with 249 km/h winds and the potential for a devastating storm surge.

Michael, which had caught many by surprise with its rapid intensification as it churned north over the Gulf of Mexico, was the most powerful storm ever recorded to hit the Panhandle, and it strengthened even as it approached land.

It made landfall northwest of the town of Mexico Beach early yesterday afternoon as a Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, just shy of an extremely rare Category 5.

The storm, which caused a major disruption in oil and gas production in the US Gulf of Mexico, had the potential to drive sea water levels as high as 4.3 metres above normal in some areas, the National Hurricane Center said.

“My God it’s scary. I didn’t expect all this,” said Bill Manning, 63, a grocery clerk who left his camper van in Panama

City, Florida, to move into a hotel where the power was already out. “Panama City, I don’t know if there will be much left.” People in coastal parts of 20 Florida counties had been told to leave their homes but by yesterday morning were told it was too late to flee.

Michael’s leading edge careened onto northwest Florida’s white-sand beaches as a still-growing category four hurricane yesterday, lashing the coast with tropical storm-force winds and rain and pushing a storm surge that could cause catastrophic damage well inland once it makes landfall.

The unexpected brute quickly sprang from a weekend tropical depression with top winds growing to 145mph, the most powerful hurricane in recorded history for this stretch of the Florida coast.

The sheriff in Panama City’s Bay County issued a shelter-inplace order before dawn yesterday, and Florida Gov. Rick Scott tweeted that for people in the hurricane’s path, “the time to evacuate has come and gone ... SEEK REFUGE IMMEDIATELY.”

At 8am, Michael’s eye was about 145km from Panama City and Apalachicola, moving relatively fast at 13mph. Tropicalstorm force winds extended 295km from the centre, lashing the coast, and hurricaneforce winds were coming closer, reaching 75km from the centre.

The storm appeared to be so powerful — with a central pressure dropping to 933 millibars — that it was expected to remain a hurricane as it moves over central Georgia early today, and unleash damaging winds all the way into the Carolinas.

“We are in new territory,” National Hurricane Centre Meteorologist Dennis Feltgen wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday. “The historical record, going back to 1851, finds no category four hurricane ever hitting the Florida panhandle.”

Rainfall could reach up to 30cm, and the life-threatening storm surge could swell to four metres.

Florida officials said more than 375,000 people up and down the Gulf Coast had been urged or ordered to evacuate.