Panhandle braces as Michael takes aim
Hurricane’s effect here likely limited to rain squalls, gusts, minor flooding.
Florida’s vulnerable Panhandle is preparing for its first major hurricane in more than a decade as an unyielding Michael sprints toward a Wednesday landfall.
The storm, which grew from a sloppy gyre off Central America, is forecast to reach dangerous Category 3 strength before colliding with the coast somewhere between Pensacola and the Big Bend region of the state.
With predictions of up to 120 mph winds and more than 9 feet of storm surge, Florida State University shut down classes for the rest of the week beginning today, counties initiated evacuations, and Gov. Rick Scott requested President Donald Trump declare a “pre-landfall emergency” for 35 counties — a trigger that releases federal assets before a catastrophic event.
“It seems like it’s coming right for us. I live four to five blocks from the water, so I’m scared,” said Tessa Whitaker, who lives in Carrabelle, a city on St. George Sound about an hour southwest of Tallahassee. “People are boarding up and buying a lot of ice and hot dogs and liquor.”
As of the 5 p.m. advisory from the National Hurricane Center, Michael was about 30 miles northwest of the western tip of Cuba with 80 mph winds and moving north at 9 mph. Hurricane warnings painted the Panhandle from the Alabama border to the Suwannee River, with a tropical storm watch reaching as far south as St. Petersburg.
The center of Michael is forecast to be about 400 miles west of Palm Beach County at 2 p.m. today. At that distance, the storm is not expected to directly affect the area.
Still, Michael means days of squally weather and wind gusts here that could reach tropical-storm strength today as the cyclone wraps tropical moisture around it. The Weather Prediction Center is
forecasting up to 2.5 inches of rain for Palm Beach County the rest of the week.
Because Michael is coinciding with seasonally higher tides, some minor coastal flooding is also possible, National Weather Service forecasters in Miami said.
“If we get a trailing band of rain that sets up over the same area for a long period of time, that could be an issue if it can’t drain,” said Robert Garcia, an NWS meteorologist in Miami. “Right now for Palm Beach County, we can’t rule out an isolated tornado, but the chances for that are not high.”
Michael is the 13th named storm of the 2018 hurricane season and the seventh hurricane.
If it makes landfall as a Category 3, it will be the first major hurricane to hit the Panhandle since Hurricane Dennis came ashore near Pensacola on July 10, 2005, with 130 mph winds.
The most recent October landfalling hurricane in the Florida Panhandle was Hurricane Opal — a Category 3 storm in 1995.
In 2016, Category 1 Hurricane Hermine hit near the Big Bend area, causing wide- spread damage and power outages.
Mike Salyer, dockmaster at the Lanark Village Boat Club and Marina west of Apalachee Bay, said he remembers an 11-foot storm surge from Dennis. While he wasn’t evacuating Monday, he was restocking supplies that had dwindled with less than two months of hurricane season remaining.
The continental shelf extends out up to 90 miles from the Panhandle’s shoreline, meaning winds have a long fetch to pile up water and push it ashore.
“I’m definitely leaving if it hits a 4,” Salyer said. “I don’t wish this kind of thing on anyone, but I also wish it wasn’t here.”
Since 1851, Florida has had 36 hurricanes make October landfalls, including 10 major hurricanes. That’s five times higher than runner-up Loui- siana, which has experienced seven October hurricane hits, including three major hurricanes, according to National Hurricane Center records.
The most recent major October hurricane to hit Florida was 2005’s Wilma.
“This has been different from a lot of the storms we’ve seen since I’ve been governor,” Scott said. “It’s fast; this is coming very fast. It could speed up. It could slow down. We don’t know. And we don’t know exactly where it’s going to hit yet.”
October storms typically form in the Caribbean and are most likely to track into Southwest Florida, taking paths similar to Wilma, which hit near Cape Romano south of Marco Island.
The clockwise churn of an area of high pressure cen- tered over Delaware is what’s keeping Michael on a more northerly path toward the Panhandle and away from South Florida, said Accu- Weather senior hurricane expert Dan Kottlowski.
After landfall, a cold front traveling across the U.S. is expected to pick Michael up and take it through Georgia and the Carolinas.
“When you look at computer models, Michael will either be a strong Category 2 or low Category 3, but it doesn’t really make a difference if you are talking 5 knots,” Kottlowski said. “If it doesn’t reach Category 3 but has 110 mph winds, it’s still going to be a badstorm.”
A Category 3 hurricane has between 111 and 129 mph winds.
Jeff Masters, Weather Underground co-founder and a meteorologist at The Weather Co., said some computer models are showing Michael gaining Category 4 strength before landfall. It’s a scenario he said has about a 30 percent chance of happening.
“We saw the case with Florence this year that where it was in much more adverse conditions and intensified to a Cat 4,” Masters said. “We are still in the peak of hurricane season, and we have a couple more weeks to sweat this out.”