Extreme Wind Warning for Monroe County, Florida

AN EXTREME WIND WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 915 AM EDT FOR
LOWER KEYS IN MONROE COUNTY...

At 800 AM EDT, National Weather Service Doppler radar indicated
extreme winds, associated with the northern eyewall of Hurricane
Irma, were moving across and just north of the Lower Keys.
If you happen to be in the Lower Keys, it is very likely that
sensible weather conditions will diminish significantly...namely the
winds and rainfall. DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THIS. As Irma continues to
move northward, winds over the next hour will shift from the exact
opposite direction, and will likely do so very violently and with
little to no time to react.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
Treat these imminent extreme winds as if a tornado was approaching
and stay in the safe room of your shelter. Continue to use whatever
you have to protect yourself from flying debris: pillows,
mattresses, blankets, helmets, etc.
DO NOT GO OUTSIDE. Remain sheltered in place and hunkered down.
This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation!
This includes US 1 between mile markers 0 and 40.
A tornado watch remains in effect until noon EDT for Florida.

Source: google.org/publicalerts/alert?aid=321dbf92346fba0d&hl=en&source=sos

What is an Extreme Wind Warning?

Extreme Wind Warning (EWW) inform the public of the need to take immediate shelter in an interior portion of a well-built structure due to the onset of extreme tropical cyclone winds. An EWW for extreme tropical cyclone winds should be issued when both of the following criteria are met: a) Tropical cyclone is a category 3 or greater on the Saffir Simpson hurricane scale as designated by NHC, CPHC or JTWC. b) Sustained tropical cyclone surface winds of 100 knots (115 mph) or greater are occurring or are expected to occur in a WFO’s county warning area within one hour.

Source: w1.weather.gov/glossary/index.php?word=Extreme+Wind+Warning

What you need to know now
The strength: Irma is currently a Category 4 with sustained winds of 130 mph.
Where is it now? The eyewall has reached the lower Florida Keys.
Where is it going? It is expected to track along Florida's western coast, clipping Naples and Fort Myers before making its way to Tampa.
Source:edition.cnn.com/2017/09/09/us/hurricane-irma-florida-latest/index.html

Hurricane Irma Live Updates: Packing 130-M.P.H. Winds, Storm Roars Into the Florida Keys
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Hurricane Irma Live Updates: Packing 130-M.P.H. Winds, Storm Roars Into the Florida Keys
By THE NEW YORK TIMESUPDATED 4:59 PM

HURRICANE IRMA By CAMILLA SCHICK, ROBIN LINDSAY and CHRIS CIRILLO 2:56
Hurricane Irma's Eye Passes Over Florida Keys
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Hurricane Irma's Eye Passes Over Florida Keys
Hurricane Irma churned toward the Florida Keys after leaving a path of destruction across the Caribbean. By CAMILLA SCHICK, ROBIN LINDSAY and CHRIS CIRILLO on Publish Date September 6, 2017. Photo by Martin Bureau/Agence France-Presse — Getty

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Packing winds of 130 miles per hour, Hurricane Irma’s eye began passing over the Florida Keys on Sunday morning after leaving a path of destruction across the Caribbean.

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The storm’s northern eye wall hit the Lower Keys about 7:20 a.m. Eastern, the National Hurricane Center said, and the eye itself was 15 miles southeast of Key West.

The storm, which was about 30 miles offshore around 6 a.m., was expected to rake the state’s west coast — a change from earlier predictions that left some residents and officials scrambling to find shelter. The new track could expose St. Petersburg — rather than Miami or Tampa — to a direct hit.

St. Petersburg, like Tampa, has not taken a head-on blow from a major hurricane in nearly a century, according to The Associated Press.

The National Hurricane Center upgraded Irma to a Category 4 hurricane at 2 a.m., saying it would cross the Lower Florida Keys during the following several hours. The storm was then expected to move up the state’s west coast, before heading inland over the Panhandle and into Georgia on Monday afternoon.

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Photo

The Palmetto Expressway in Miami on Saturday as Hurricane Irma approached. Credit Scott McIntyre for The New York Times
Here’s the latest:

• More than 300,000 people in Florida were without power Sunday morning. Keys Energy Services, which supplies electricity to Key West and the Lower Florida Keys, said that all of its 29,000 customers were without power.

• At least 25 people have been confirmed dead in parts of the Caribbean affected by Irma. The hurricane made landfall in Cuba on Friday evening — the first Category 5 hurricane to hit the island since 1924. President Raúl Castro said there had been serious damage to the country’s power grid. The newspaper Granma said there had been unprecedented flooding in parts of Havana.

• Florida officials have ordered more than 6.5 million residents to leave their homes, one of the largest emergency evacuations in American history. About 540,000 people were told to leave the Georgia coast. Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina have declared states of emergency. Here are our maps tracking the storm.

• Gov. Rick Scott warned on Saturday night that the state could get as much as 18 inches of rain, with the Keys getting up to 25 inches. Southwest Florida could see a storm surge of 15 feet above ground level, and entire neighborhoods stretching northward from Naples to Tampa Bay could be submerged.

• Separately, Hurricane Jose, a Category 4 storm, was passing farther north of the Leeward Islands than initially predicted.

• Sign up for the Morning Briefing for hurricane news and for a look at what you need to know to begin your day.

SEVERITY Category 5 4 3 2 1 Tropical storm

Area of tropical-storm-force winds
Area of hurricane-force winds
Sunday 8 a.m.

More detailed maps »
The storm hits Florida.
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Photo

Torrential rain and whipping winds at Brickell Key in Miami on Sunday heralded the arrival of Hurricane Irma. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times
As Irma’s eye began moving across the Florida Keys, the storm gathered intensity in Miami, tearing signs from their foundations, downing power lines, ripping trees from their roots and whipping the huge cranes that dot the Miami skyline around in precarious circles.

Water from Biscayne Bay was already flooding into the street in Brickell and central Miami, making roads impassable. Rivers and lakes were overflowing — and that was before the full force of the storm hit.

Most buildings and houses were shrouded in darkness, streetlights were out, and police officers and National Guard troops were hunkered down like everyone else.

With the power out for hundreds of thousands of people across southern Florida, there was no television to keep them updated and only the power left on their phones to keep them in touch with the world.

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The storm was expected to batter the city for hours, and many people who had evacuated to hotels and other places of safety found themselves without air-conditioning but with windows shut tight, an atmosphere that quickly became claustrophobic.

Many in Miami expressed relief on Saturday as the path of the storm veered toward the west coast. But as they awoke to the sounds of snapping trees and exploding transformers, the mood shifted.

People rechecked their supplies.

Photo

Watching the storm from a hotel parking garage in Miami on Sunday morning. Credit Eric Thayer for The New York Times
“I told my daughter, Emily, Now it gets real,” said Angel Quirindongo, 31. “I told her, ‘Now one piece of bread, later a piece of bread, and save what you really want.’ ”

Although Mr. Quirindongo lives in the city, he was riding out the storm at the Element Hotel, near Miami International Airport, where he works for American Airlines. He was 10 years old when Hurricane Andrew hit, and he said he remembered going weeks without power. It was not a pleasant experience, he added.

“This one doesn’t know,” he said, motioning to Emily, his 13-year-old daughter.

By 7:15 a.m., the hotel had barricaded the doors with sandbags, and nobody was allowed in or out. Emergency lights flashed and the generator was being used only to power a limited number of lights in the lobby.

People emerged from their crowded rooms bleary-eyed, children and pets by their side, and they snacked on fruit and coffee provided by the hotel while wind and rain pounded the windows. The palm trees outside bent to breaking point, and frequent lightning strikes lit up the sky.

While her father was calm and collected, Emily said she had never been through a major hurricane. “It’s really scary,” she said.

Her father reminded her that the day was just beginning. “It is going to get a lot worse before it gets better,” he said.

Residents and officials scramble to find shelter.
Photo

Evacuees waited to enter the Germain Arena, which is being used as a shelter, in Estero, Fla., on Saturday. Credit Gerald Herbert/Associated Press
Hurricane Irma’s sudden drive to the west prompted last-minute orders for evacuation in Collier and Lee Counties in Florida, leaving little time for residents to pack up and find shelter.

“We thought we were safe,” said a spokeswoman for Collier County who declined to give her name because she was not authorized to discuss the situation. “We thought we were safe like 36 hours ago.”

Photo

Waves crashed against Key West, Fla., on Saturday. Credit Rob O'Neal/The Key West Citizen, via Associated Press
The spokeswoman said that a forecast at 5 p.m. on Thursday caused county officials to react, getting shelters ready and helping residents seeking to evacuate.

At 6 a.m., Collier County declared a civil emergency and ordered all residents to shelter in place until the storm passed. All emergency vehicles were pulled off the roads an hour later.

In Lee County, three of 14 shelters remained open, including one at an elementary school in Lehigh Acres, well east and inland of Ft. Myers. But the large shelter at Germain Arena in Estero, which opened less than 24 hours before, was full.

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In Miami-Dade County, some people who had flocked to shelters were reassessing their situation on Saturday afternoon after learning that the brunt of the hurricane would most likely be felt farther west.

“We’re going home,” Virginia Lopez, an administrative assistant at Barry University, said as she loaded her 5-year-old poodle mix, Princess, into her Mazda outside a shelter at Highland Oaks Middle School after spending the night there with her daughter and son-in-law.

“We decided half an hour ago. The storm has moved to Tampa, so we’re going to get a lot of rain but it won’t be as bad. I don’t feel so scared.”

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On Miami Beach, Karen Asher-Howard, who stayed in her beachfront high rise, said her husband and their 17-year-old daughter were still fast asleep Sunday morning.

So far, she said the storm had been “uneventful.”

“We have been very safe and very lucky so far,” she said. “We know the worst may still come.”

The Keys brace for a direct strike.
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Photo

Ringing the hurricane bell on Saturday near Crawfordville, Fla. Credit Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images
In the Florida Keys, emergency officials girded for a direct hit and residents who did not evacuate began to take cover as the winds kicked up sharply Saturday afternoon.

The Keys, a thin chain of low-lying islands, are especially vulnerable to Hurricane Irma’s anticipated powerful tidal surges.

The ocean is expected to rise and hurtle into buildings and houses near the coast. Pine Island, north of Key West, was already seeing rising seas at noon.

Some canals were spilling their bounds and emergency responders were evacuating to the Upper Keys.

But the worst could come after the hurricane moves on. Keys residents could find themselves isolated from the mainland if any of the 42 bridges gets damaged.

Residents and emergency officials would be cut off from food, gas and other supplies because there would be no easy way of reaching them by road.

“Just think about the Keys for a second,” Mr. Scott warned residents at a recent news conference. “If we lose one bridge, everything south of the bridge, everybody’s going to be stranded. It’s going to take us a while to get back in there to try to provide services.”

Patients were evacuated from Palms of Pasadena Hospital in South Pasadena, Fla. on Friday. Credit Eve Edelheit/Tampa Bay Times, via Associated Press
Hurricane Irma has already disrupted Florida’s health systems. As of Saturday night, 29 hospitals, 239 assisted-living centers and 56 other health care facilities in the state were evacuated, according to Jason Mahon, a public information officer at the Florida State Emergency Operations Center. More than 60 shelters were opened for people with special needs.

Not all health organizations made the difficult choice to transfer their patients out of Irma’s path. Tampa General Hospital, the highest-level trauma center in the region, remained open and full of patients and staff, despite being surrounded by water on the tip of Davis Islands.

The hospital is in Zone A, the area most vulnerable to storm surge.

A spokesman for the hospital, John Dunn, said by phone Saturday night that staff members had arrived on Friday to stay through the storm and work in shifts to care for the hospital’s approximately 700 patients.

Mr. Dunn said the hospital had submarine doors to protect against flooding, and generators had been elevated from the ground floor to a higher level. They are capable of powering air-conditioning for parts of the buildings, he said.

He added that the hospital’s leaders had spoken in the past with local emergency officials and with the Federal Emergency Management Agency about how the hospital might evacuate. “There are not many resources available to be able to evacuate large numbers of patients,” he said.

Cuba assesses the damage.
Photo

Damage wrought by Hurricane Irma in Villa Clara Province, Cuba, on Saturday. Credit Adalberto Roque/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Irma slammed into Cuba on Friday night as a Category 5 hurricane, causing widespread destruction. Meteorologists were expecting the storm to tack north earlier, and were not predicting a direct hit.

The eye of the storm passed directly through the archipelago of keys on the northern coast in the central part of the island.

The damage to its central provinces was substantial: Power lines were brought down in Camaguey, houses were destroyed in Ciego de Ávila and fishing towns have been submerged in Villa Clara.

A ‘doomsday scene’ on the British Virgin Islands.
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Photo

Many homes were destroyed on Virgin Gorda, in the British Virgin Islands. Credit Caribbean Buzz Helicopters/Caribbean Buzz Helicopters, via Associated Press
With communications limited on the British Virgin Islands, the full scope of the damage from Hurricane Irma was still revealing itself. On Saturday, at least five deaths were reported by the governor, Gus Jaspert. With communication on the island all but severed, officials were still working to assess the full scale of devastation.

Residents of Tortola, the largest island, said buildings had been leveled and roads washed away. People have limited food and water.

“It is like an apocalyptic doomsday scene here,” she said. “No trees, leaves or greenery.”

Reporting was contributed by Marc Santora, Lizette Alvarez and Nick Madigan from Miami; David Moll from Hong Kong; and Johanna Barr, Caitlin Dickerson, Christopher Mele, John Schwartz, Matt Stevens and Vivian Wang from New York.

Get updates about news across the United States via Twitter and in the Morning Briefing newsletter.

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Source:: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/us/hurricane-irma-florida.html?ribbon-ad-idx=3&rref=us&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=U.S.&action=swipe&region=FixedRight&pgtype=article

Source: google.org/publicalerts/alert?aid=321dbf92346fba0d&hl=en&source=sos
Source: w1.weather.gov/glossary/index.php?word=Extreme+Wind+Warning
Source: edition.cnn.com/2017/09/09/us/hurricane-irma-florida-latest/index.html