Aerial images show the scale of Michael’s wrath

Satellite images released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration after the storm crashed ashore near Mexico Beach on Friday reveal not just its power, but its reach: surging ocean waters that ripped up roads and cleaved new channels, entire neighbourhoods blown away and sea bottom carried across forest floors.

Such images can provide an easy way to scale a storm’s impact, especially when roads are impassable. Damage from Hurricane Irma was simple to trace.

But images from the Gulf shoreline after the first Category 4 on record to strike the Panhandle seem all the more harrowing for their mixture of blue-collar beach towns and sweeping wilderness.

Authorities are just beginning to assess the damage, but early estimates put losses at more than US$8 billion.

– Miami Herald