Michael on path to hit Florida as Cat 3 storm
Hurricane Michael strengthened and sharpened its track toward the Florida Panhandle on Monday, imperiling a vast stretch of the state that must cope with the threat of a suddenly menacing storm.
The risks posed by the hurricane extended hundreds of miles inland, and it was poised to bombard parts of the South and Mid-Atlantic as a tropical storm, endangering regions still recovering from Hurricane Florence’s deluge last month.
The National Hurricane Center said it expected Michael to make landfall Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane, with sustained winds of at least 111 mph. If the forecast holds,
Michael would be the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the mainland United States so far this year.
“This storm will be life-threatening and extremely dangerous,” Gov. Rick Scott of Florida said at a televised news conference in South- port, Florida, just north of Panama City.
“Michael can still change direction and impact any part of the state,” said Scott, who warned that some areas could receive up to a foot of rain, and that destructive winds were likely to hit both along the coast, in places like Panama City, and inland, includ- ing Tallahassee, the capital. Local officials were considering whether to order evacu- ations from some communities before the storm, which is expected to bring tropical storm-force winds to the state beginning today.
Unlike Hurricane Florence, which slowly approached the Carolinas from the Atlantic Ocean and then meandered for days, Hurricane Michael offered little time for prepa-
ration. When Scott spoke, just after 8 a.m. Monday,
the system was a tropical storm, though one forecast to strengthen. Less than three hours later, the hurricane cen- ter upgraded it to a Category 1 hurricane and anticipated a Category 3 strike Wednesday.
On Monday afternoon, the hurricane center said the storm was about 145 miles
northeast of Cozumel, Mexico, with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph, just above the threshold to be classified as a hurricane. The storm was moving north at 9 mph, lead- ing to watches and warnings in Cuba, Mexico and the United States.
A hurricane warning was in effect for Pinar del Rio, a province in western Cuba, and a hurricane watch was posted from the Alabama-Florida border to the Suwannee River in Florida.
But federal and state offi- cials have increasingly been instructing residents not to judge storms solely by their categorization under the Saffir-Simpson scale, which is
based only on wind speed. And with Hurricane Michael, they said they were particularly concerned about storm surge in a region especially vulner- able to it, warning of a surge of 8 to 12 feet in some areas.
Preparations for the storm, the 13th named tropical cyclone of an Atlantic hurricane season that will last until Nov. 30, began in Florida
over the weekend and inten- sified Monday. President Don- ald Trump, addressing the International Association of Chiefs of Police convention in Orlando on Monday after- noon, said the Federal Emer- gency Management Agency was “getting prepared” for a storm that “looks like a big one.”
“Never ends, but we’re all prepared, and hopefully it won’t be as bad as it’s look- ing,” Trump said.
On Monday, Scott expanded an emergency declaration to 35 counties.