Hurricane Idalia Hits Florida, Swamping the Gulf Coast
By Julia Echikson August 30, 2023 1:18 pm
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Hurricane Idalia barreled into Florida Wednesday morning, creating dangerous storm surges along much of the state’s Gulf Coast.
The storm briefly strengthened to a Category 4 hurricane overnight, before making landfall just before 8 a.m. Wednesday in the Big Bend region. Idalia reached Big Bend as a Category 3 hurricane with winds of up to 125 mph, the worst such storm to hit the region in over a century.
Along the way, Idalia battered cities along Florida’s Gulf Coast, including Tallahassee and Tampa, flooding some parts with as much as 11 feet of water. As of noon Wednesday, two deaths have been recorded, and more than 273,000 households in Florida were without power Wednesday morning, according to PowerOutage.us.
“This is a very powerful storm,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a press conference Wednesday morning. The region will continue to endure “significant impacts” from storm surges through Wednesday evening, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned.
Idalia is now passing through Georgia as a Category 1 hurricane. While weaker in strength, the hurricane is still expected to create “catastrophic” storm surges, according to the NHC.
Making matters worse, a separate system, Hurricane Franklin, is churning through the Atlantic Ocean. While it’s not expected to make landfall in the U.S., Franklin has created dangerous current conditions along the Eastern Seaboard. The coasts of South Carolina and some parts of North Carolina are under a tornado watch.
Idalia marks the first major hurricane to hit the Sunshine State this year and comes less than a year after Hurricane Ian hit. The Category 4 hurricane pummeled the Fort Myers area in September, costing an estimated $115.2 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
But officials remain optimistic that Idalia will be less destructive given that, unlike Fort Myers, the Big Bend region is sparsely populated. “Compared to say an Ian where you had it mixed with a lot of commercial and residential, this is likely just going to be a lot of trees and roads and stuff,” Gov. DeSantis said Monday.
Still, Idalia could further crater Florida’s home insurance market, which has some of the most expensive premiums in the country. As insurance providers have struggled to cope with the rising costs of climate change-related damage in the last few years, some, such as Farmers Insurance, have either pulled out of Florida or gone bankrupt.
Julia Echikson can be reached at jechikson@commercialobserver.com.
