Hurricane Idalia Smashes Ashore In Florida; Widespread Damage Ongoing

Screen grab from video taken from the Weather Channel's
Jim Cantore showing a storm surge blasting into 
Cedar Key, Florida early this morning. 

 Hurricane Idalia, as expected, slammed into the northwestern Florida coastline at around 8 a.m. this morning with top winds of around 120 mph. 

The eye hit Florida's "Big Bend" area a little south of the town of Perry and just a little southeast of Apalachee Bay. The hit zone was about 50 miles south of Tallahassee. As of 8:15 p.m. the airport in Perry was reporting north winds at 62 mph gusting to 85 mph. 

Live streams from the storm zone showed a devastating storm surge, which was long predicted to be the worst part of hurricane Idalia.  Reed Timmer's live stream on YouTube showed at least five feet of ocean water in Cedar Keys, Florida, with lots of debris floating in the water 

Other images showed trees being tossed by winds gusting to 100 mph.

Well south of the storm center, storm surges reached as high as seven feet in Tampa Bay, so there's probably damage to report there as well.  

Since we're still in the middle of the storm, we obviously have no idea of whether there have been any casualties, or how extensive the damage is.

Hurricane Idalia will continue plowing through northern Florida and southern Georgia today. Over land, it will be weakening, but will still pack quite a punch. Hurricane force winds are spreading across southern Georgia as lumbers on. 

Radar image of Hurricane Idalia moving inland
into northwest Florida this morning. 

Idalia, as expected, was strengthening almost all the way to the coast. Just offshore, it peaked at about 130 mph.

Then, it started going through what is known as an eyewall replacement cycle. The area immediately around the central eye of a hurricane features the strongest, most destructive winds.  That circle of destructive winds is known as the eyewall. 

Very often, a strong hurricane will have a tiny, pinhole eye, but then a new eyewall forms a little further out from the center and the original eyewall disappears.  

This will cause the top winds of a hurricane to decrease a little, but also expands the area experiencing hurricane force winds.   That's why Idalia "weakened" to 120 mph at landfall. 

As a practical matter, this makes no difference in the destructive power of Idalia. It still created just as immense a storm surge as it would have had it not gone through that last minute cycle before landfall. And, as we've seen in the live streams, there's lots of damage from those hurricane force winds. 

Idalia will head eastward off the southeastern United States coast tomorrow. After that, its future is unknown, but it won't be any kind of threat to us up here in Vermont.