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| Satellite photo of Hurricane Michael from last night |
Anybody who lives in that neck of the woods ought to really hurry up and finish hurricane evacuations and preparations today.
This storm didn't give people all that much time to prepare. The danger only became apparent on Sunday.
Winds of tropical storm force will reach the Florida coast early tonight, so everybody has until about dinner time this evening to get their preparations all done.
A glimmer of good news is that Michael temporarily stopped intensifying last night, holding steady for several hours with sustained winds of 90 mph. Which is bad but could be worse.
Well, it IS getting worse. The 7 a.m. statement from the National Hurricane Center said winds had just ticked up to 100 mph in Michael.
The National Hurricane Center said Michael would probably continue strengthening today over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Relatively strong winds aloft which might be inhibiting Michael a bit will relax, giving the storm a better chance to get stronger before landfall.
By the time Michael reaches shore, it's possible its winds could be 120 mph. That's obviously very dangerous. Such winds are capable of wrecking even sturdy buildings and removing quite a few roofs. It looks like Panama City and maybe Tallahassee are screwed with this one.
As in most hurricanes, the biggest danger from Michael is the storm surge. As Bob Henson in his Category 6 blog points out, there's a lot of shallow water extending roughly 80 miles off the coast of the hurricane zone.
Winds on the east side of Michael will pile a lot of water into that shallow zone, so coastal storm surges could reach ten feet or more. Add battering waves on top of that and all those beachfront homes, condos, restaurants, tourist attractions and honky tonks are all in danger.
The Florida Panhandle is pretty flat, so the storm surge could go pretty far inland, too.
I think the people in the Florida Panhandle are taking this storm surge threat seriously, because this region seems particularly vulnerable to hurricanes with destructive storm surges. In recent history, hurricane storm surges have caused a lot of damage in instances like Hurricane Hermine in 2016, Dennis 2005, Ivan in 2004, Opal in 1995 and Kate in 1985.
The winds of all hurricanes diminish rapidly once they come ashore. But Michael will be picking up forward speed at landfall, so it will cover a lot of ground in Florida and southern Georgia before winds die down too much. The path of Michael over this region will cover a lot of heavily forested ground, so tree damage will be immense.
Michael will race over the areas of the Carollnas devastated by Hurricane Florence, but it will be moving along so quickly that it will only slightly worsen the high water situation there. Then it will go off the coast and scream rapidly toward Europe as a very strong, non-hurricane storm. But out in the North Atlantic, the former Michael will be a beast, with perhaps 70 mph winds.
The path of Michael will take it much too far south of us here in Vermont to have any effect on us.
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