A Category 4 storm

Idalia, a tropical storm, that hit Florida late Wednesday night as a Category 3 hurricane: The impact on the coastal area of Florida and the Carolinas

Idalia slammed into the southeast US coastline late Wednesday night as a tropical storm after hitting Florida earlier in the day as a major Hurricane.

The state of Florida has a long peninsula that curves to meet the Panhandle. Governors of Georgia and the Carolinas declared states of emergency because of the concerns about heavy rains and potential tornadoes, after officials in Florida ordered people to leave their homes.

More than 250,000 homes and businesses were still without power across Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas as of Thursday morning, according to the monitoring site PowerOutage.us, and broken traffic signals throughout the region are adding another layer of danger to travel conditions.

The Florida National Guard has been fully activated with over 50,000 soldiers and airmen who have either been deployed or are about to be deployed.

Communities along hundreds of miles of coastline filled grocery store shelves and boarded up windows. Many people have left the island city of Cedar Key. “My family has been here for many generations,” said the mayor, Heath Davis. We haven’t seen a storm like this before.

The strongest to hit the Big Bend area of Florida was a Category 3 hurricane with 125 mph winds.

In South Carolina, the National Weather Service reported “major coastal inundation,” including in downtown Charleston where water had broken through the historic seawall, the Charleston battery.

A supermoon that peaked Wednesday night is expected to exacerbate the range of coastal tides, bringing an added layer of danger. People living in the Carolinas are told of the risk for tornadoes.

The storm’s strength is expected to be the same all day. Maximum sustained wind speeds of near 60 mph extend outward from the center of the storm for up to 185 miles, the NHC said.

Despite mandatory evacuation orders, boat teams in Florida rescued more than 75 people in St. Petersburg and another 60 people from Hudson from several feet of storm surge. A gauge along Big Bend’s Steinhatchee River measured an increase from from 1 foot to 8 feet in just an hour, enough to reverse the flow of the river; sailboats, loosed from their moorings, were seen crashing against a traffic bridge.

When it comes to disasters, there may be a few homes along a five or 10 mile stretch of road, so it may take days or even weeks to re-string lines across these large distances. It’s not known if the power plants were damaged heavily.

In comparison to Hurricane Ian, which wreaked havoc in Florida a year ago, only a handful of deaths have been linked to the storm.

The person died in Georgia, according to the AP. Two men were killed in rain related crashes within hours of each other, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

The governor of Florida didn’t say whether it was one of the two deaths reported earlier in the day, or if it was a storm-related death.

Search and Rescue Teams in the Big Bend Area after the Supersonic Category Blowup on Wednesday (Harris) Day 2, 3/8, and 6/7

The path of the storm may have helped spare the state some damage. The Big Bend region is a farming area that includes Florida’s Panhandle and the peninsula.

It appears that most people in impacted areas did heed warnings to evacuate, Gov. DeSantis said at a press briefing on Wednesday. He said search and rescue teams had visited “about 70%” of the areas they needed to check.

“It does not mean that there won’t be trees coming down late this afternoon, early this evening in places like Savannah, power lines coming down. Kemp said there was still a very dangerous situation and people should prepare for it.

Kemp told people to be prepared even after the storm weakened.

Several authorities have been dispatched across the state, including Florida Urban Search and Rescue, the Florida National Guard, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Florida State Guard, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The agency has completed 75% of its primary search for people and are not finding them in their homes, signaling many residents chose to evacuate, Guthrie said.

The director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management said that by Wednesday there were no outstanding missing person reports.

The SC Water Depth Curfew As a Signature of Hurricane Irregularity in the Outskirts of South Carolina

In northern Florida, primary roads became impassable with downed power lines and split trees strewn across traffic lanes. The National Weather Service reported a lot of coastal flooding in South Carolina, including in downtown Charleston where the seawall broke.

The curfew will be in effect until further notice because of the extensive damage of the event and for the sake of safety and security of our citizens and first responders.