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| Satellite view of extremely powerful Hurricane Michael as it approached the Florida Panhandle this morning. |
Unfortuately, it's more powerful than expected. Much more powerful.
Hurricane Michael was a Category 4 storm with top winds of 145 mph as of 7 a.m. today.
Worse, it was still strengthening as of 8 a.m. this morning. The tops of the clouds near the eye of the storm were getting colder, which is a sure sign of strenthening. The central air pressure of Michael was also falling, meaning it's getting stronger.
If Michael comes ashore with 145 mph winds, it will be among the ten strongest hurricanes to make landfall anywhere in the United States. The area where it hits - probably near Panaman City - will never look the same.
To think that just five days ago, Michael seemed like a distant, minor threat. Now, it's a cataclysm. Another one in an era that has brought us some of the most destructive hurricanes in U.S. history: This list is getting long and depressing: Harvey, Irma, Maria, Matthew. Sandy, Irene
The outer winds of Hurricane Michael were coming ashore in the Florida this morning. As I noted yesterday, this area has had a lot of hurricanes over the years. But this one is the strongest in memory.
A category 4 hurricane has never come ashore in the Florida Panhandle in records dating back to at least 1851.
The National Weather Service in Tallahassee put it starkly enough: "This will be a catastropjic event the likes of which this region has never seen."
The 145 mph winds will cover a relatively small area, as they do in most strong hurricanes. But destructive hurricane force winds will cover a wide area. As of early this morning, the hurricane force winds extended out 45 miles from the center of Michael. Tropical storm force winds extended out 185 miles from the center.
The winds of all hurricanes diminish fairly quickly once they come ashore. But Michael is so powerful it will take quite awhile for the winds to spin down. That means hurricane force winds will plow into Georgia and tropical storm force winds will go all the way up into the Carolinas. Michael will then pass off the East Coast by early Friday morning.
Best guesses are more than a million people will lose electricity from Florida to North Carolina.
Hurricane winds are often the most visually dramatic aspects of storms like Michael. We'll see a lot of videos of it, I'm sure,since this storm is coming ashore during daylight hours.
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| Radar imagery of Michael at 7:10 a.m. today. |
When the storm comes in, the storm surge will be ridiculous. If the storm comes ashore at high tide, the surge could be as much as 13 feet above normal levels.
Anybody who didn't evacuate from the storm surge zone will very likely die. Storm surges flow violently, and have battering waves from the hurricane winds to boot. The water will also be laden with debris as it plows into shoreline neighborhoods.
I hope everybody is away from the coast by now. The mayor of Tallahassee, Florida said this morning it's now too late to evacuate. People just have to hunker down and hope for the best.
All hurricanes produce torrential rain. There will be stripe of four to eight inches of rain, with locally higher amount from the Florida Panhandle, across central Georgia, and into the Carolinas and southeastern Virginia.
As you remember, the Carolinas are still dealing with the catastrophic flooding and its aftermath from Hurricane Florence. As of this morning, a southeasterly air flow off the Atlantic Ocean, arranged in part by the position of Michael, was dumping heavy showers on South Carolina.
This is going to be another extreme disaster. This, in a year we've had far too many.
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