Hurricane Idalia upgraded

[TTmonkey]

It seems Hurricane Idalia is strengthening at alarming rates and has now been declared Cat 4 whilst still growing in strength.

Landfall predicted later today (about 1800 UK time)and risk of catastrophic damage is forecast. Forecast landfall is in sparsely populated region of NW Florida and no hurricane has ever been recorded as making land fall in this part of the coastline before.

[ChocolateFrog]

Earlier than that judging by this.

[geeman237]

I’m in Charleston, SC and it looks like it’s going to get a little dicey through the evening here.

I know we’ve got some Floridian PHers on here so best of luck to them.

[GroundEffect]

Two hurricanes within days. Sounds fun.

We were in Cuba until Sunday night. We missed the edge of the storm by hours.

[Niponeoff]

Crikey. My old boy did say he was trying everything down, but I didn't think much of it. They normally miss him up in Gainesville. That's pretty close!

[heisthegaffer]

Not my area of expertise but according to reddit at least one or two insurers are pulling out of Florida entirely.

[Biker 1]

I have various friends & relations just south of Tampa. Looks like the worst will just miss them, but the storm surge looks pretty scary!

[baldy1926]

Very disappointed bbc reporter as nothing much had happened.
Who would have thought that there would be a hurricane during hurricane season

[TTmonkey]

baldy1926 said:

Very disappointed bbc reporter as nothing much had happened.
Who would have thought that there would be a hurricane during hurricane season

Yeah he was in Tampa, and the hurricane wasn’t.

[Sway]

Surge looks pretty brutal.

Tallahassee is probably going to be the worst effected population centre. Colleague's daughter is at college there, so she's worried.

Here in Central Florida (I landed a day before Ian, and now a day before Idalia) it's fairly uneventful - squally rain, but nice and warm and fairly low winds.

Lots of tornado warning sirens where I am though!

[Niponeoff]

Around 65mph winds in Gainesville, so not the worst of it.