Irma Damage Is Incredibly Widely Distributed

A big mess to clean up in Miami Beach. Photo
by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

Hurricane Irma was continuing to torture Florida early this morning, as it moved through the northern part of the state and on into Georgia.

The storm has fallen to tropical storm status  this morning as sustained winds fell below 75 mph.

So far two U.S. deaths have been reported with Irma, but that could still rise.

I'm sure the damage from Irma in the United States will go well into the billions of dollars yet again.

It's not as if any one town or city, or any one county was devastated. There is no place that I know of in Florida that's completely leveled.

But the area Irma covered is so vast that serious damage is distributed over an unusually wide area for a hurricane.

Pretty much all of Florida except the extreme northwest corner got a big blow. Close to 5 million Floridians had no electricity this morning.

In some places - like Naples and Tampa-St Pete, there was storm surge damage but it was less than many feared.  However, with strong west winds south of the center of Irma this morning, there could be new storm surges along Florida's west coast today.

Preliminary reports indicate severe damage is hit and miss. The city of Naples is largely intact, but Everglade City, a little to the south, is reporting serious damage. There was a lot of storm surge flooding on Marco Island, too.
Reports from the hard-hit Florida Keys are sparse, with no phone service and no way yet to get access to the islands. We'll see what happens there.



Irma was and is so wide that is sent storm surges into Miami and on up the east coast to Georgia. This morning, Jacksonville, Florida, which was nowhere close to the center of the storm's eye, had a record high storm surge off the Atlantic Ocean. Water rescues were ongoing and the city was under a flash flood emergency.

A weather station in Jacksonville this morning also recorded sustained winds of 68 mph, gusting to 87 mph.   The storm's reach is so long that Atlanta, Georgia was under its first-ever tropical storm warning this morning.

Storm surges will continue on into coastal Georgia and South Carolina today.

When Irma made a landfall at Marco Island, the wind gusted to 130 mph.

As of this writing, it's hard to say how extensive the damage is in Florida. It was too stormy to go out last night for a look-see in most of the state. So the evaluations are starting this morning, especially in the southern part of the state, where the storm was winding down first.

On Sunday, I noticed a lot of people were glued to the television, watching all the live updates. And I guess that was the appeal: It was live TV, and unlike the mostly scripted things we see on the boob tube, we didn't know what the eventual outcome would be.

I'm not saying this was disaster as entertainment, but you have to admit, Irma held our interest, that's for sure.

There will be plenty more news about Irma in the coming days and weeks, but lets hope we can continue to get some of those "not as bad as feared" dispatches.