Reuters :
Hurricane Idalia strengthened on Tuesday as it lumbered toward Florida’s Gulf Coast, where officials ordered evacuations and urged millions of residents to brace for a possible major Category 3 tempest to make landfall on Wednesday.
Idalia was expected to attain major-hurricane status – with sustained winds topping at least 111 miles per hour (179 kph) – on Wednesday morning before slamming ashore later in the day, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC).
The NHC projected Idalia’s center would likely cross Florida’s coastline somewhere in the Big Bend region, where the state’s northern panhandle curves around into the Gulf side of the Florida Peninsula.
The intensifying storm was on an uncertain path as it spun northward over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
It put most of Florida’s 21 million residents, along with those in the southern parts of Georgia and South Carolina, under hurricane, tropical storm and storm surge warnings and advisories.
Authorities said Idalia’s chief threat to human life stemmed from surging walls of seawater that would be driven inland by high winds, inundating low-lying coastal areas
Storm surge warnings were posted for hundreds of miles of shoreline, from Sarasota in the north through Tampa and stretching to the sport fishing haven of Indian Pass at the western end of Apalachicola Bay.
In some spots, the surge of water could rise 8 feet (2.44 m) to 12 feet, the National Hurricane Center said.
Storm surge and urban flash flooding made previous hurricanes deadly, FEMA Chief Deanne Criswell said on CNN on Tuesday.
“The No. 1 killer in all of these storms is water,” she said.
St Petersburg residents living in areas prone to flooding were urged to leave by Tuesday afternoon, the city’s police chief Anthony Holloway said on CNN.
