Hurricane Michael gains fury: “Seek refuge immediately”
USA — Gaining frightening fury overnight, Hurricane Michael closed in yesterday on the Florida Panhandle with potentially catastrophic winds of 145 mph, the most powerful storm on record ever to menace the stretch of fishing towns, military bases and spring-break beaches. With more than 375,000 people up and down the Gulf Coast warned to clear out, the hurricane’s leading edge began lashing the white-sand shoreline with tropical stormforce winds, rain and rising seas before daybreak, hours before Michael’s center was expected to blow ashore. “I really fear for what things are going to look like there tomorrow at this time”, Colorado State University hurricane expert Phil Klotzbach said in an email. The unexpected brute quickly sprang from a weekend tropical depression, reaching Category 4 early yesterday as it drew energy from the Gulf of Mexico’s 84degree waters. That was up from a Category 2 on Tuesday afternoon. “The time to evacuate has come and gone. SEEK REFUGE IMMEDIATELY”, Florida Gov. Rick Scott tweeted, while the sheriff in Panama City’s Bay County issued a shelter-in-place order before dawn.
At 8 AM, Michael was centered was about 90 miles from Panama City and Apalachicola, moving fast at 13 mph. Tropical storm winds extended 185 miles from the center, and hurricane-force winds reached out 45 miles. The storm appeared to be so powerful — with a central pressure dropping to 933 millibars — that it is expected to remain a hurricane as it moves over Georgia early Thursday. Forecasters said it will unleash damaging winds and rain all the way into the Carolinas, which are still recovering from Hurricane Florence’s epic flooding.
“We are in new territory”, National Hurricane Center Meteorologist Dennis Feltgen wrote on Facebook. “The historical record, going back to 1851, finds no Category 4 hurricane ever hitting the Florida panhandle.” Meteorologists watched in real time as a new government satellite showed the hurricane’s eye tightening, surrounded by lightning that lit it up “like a Christmas tree”. “I guess it’s the worstcase scenario. I don’t think anyone would have experienced this in the Panhandle”, meteorologist Ryan Maue of weathermodels.com said. “This is going to have structure-damaging winds along the coast and hurricane-force winds inland.”
(msn)