Michael on path to slam Florida

Storm expected to hit as Category 3 hurricane with up to 12-foot surge.

ATLANTA — 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 Southport, 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, including Tallahassee, the capital. Local officials were considering whether to order evacuations 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 preparation. 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 center 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, leading 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 officials 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 vulnerable 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 intensified Monday. President Donald Trump, addressing the International Association of Chiefs of Police convention in Orlando on Monday afternoon, said the Federal Emergency 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 looking,” Trump said.

On Monday, Scott expanded an emergency declaration to 35 counties.

Some 500 members of the National Guard were activated and thousands more were on standby.

In Tallahassee, where officials are still stung by criticisms surrounding their handling of Hurricane Hermine in 2016, authorities distributed sandbags and opened shelters.

And despite planning for electrical failures in a city with a vast tree canopy, they cautioned that this week’s storm could prove more problematic than the one two years ago, which caused widespread and protracted power failures in the Florida capital.

“Unfortunately our community has become all too familiar with this drill, but in some cases I think it has made us all the more ready for the events that we are anticipating,” said Mayor Andrew Gillum of Tallahassee, who is also the Democratic nominee to succeed Scott as governor.

Florida State University said it would close Tuesday and did not expect to resume normal operations until Monday. (The university’s football team, which plays in a stadium that seats close to 80,000 people, does not have another home game until Oct. 20.)

Closer to the coast, local authorities said they were preparing to close bridges and urged visitors to leave.

“They need to be making plans to go back home,” said Mark Bowen, the chief of emergency services in Bay County, Florida, which includes Panama City, Mexico Beach and Tyndall Air Force Base. “They need to stay safe so that they can come back here and visit us again.”