Hurricane Irma 2017 Path, Track, News: NHC Puts Up Storm Surge Warnings for Several Places in Florida
Hurricane Irma has grown even stronger, and it has maximum sustained winds of up to 160 miles per hour. Irma, one of the biggest storms ever to come out of the Atlantic, is now a category 5 storm once again as it rips into northern Cuba en route to Florida.
The hurricane slammed the Camaguey islands with winds of up to 160 miles per hour, prompting the National Hurricane Center (NHC) to upgrade the storm to a record-setting category 5 classification, according to Reuters.
The latest advisory from the NHC puts the Florida Keys, Tampa Bay, and the County Line shared by Volusia and Brevard under a Storm Surge Warning. These areas are now deemed to be in danger of life-threatening floods from rapidly rising waters moving inland from the coast within the next 24 to 36 hours.
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NHC released their reassessment of Irma at 2 a.m. EDT today from new data gathered by Hurricane Hunter planes as they found higher gusts of winds clocked at 160 miles per hour. The hurricane is now expected to sustain this power as it heads towards Florida from Cuba.
The tropical cyclone is expected to turn towards the northwest later today, as the eye of the hurricane follows a path along the northern coast of Cuba. Irma is expected to hover near the Florida Keys by early Sunday, eventually making a possible landfall near the southwest coast of Florida on the afternoon of the same day.
Florida Governor Rick Scott issued a dire warning. "We are running out of time. If you are in an evacuation zone, you need to go now. This is a catastrophic storm like our state has never seen," he said to reporters. Evacuation of almost 25 percent of the state's entire population has been ordered.
The video below from Reuters shows Hurricane Irma slamming into Cuba and the Bahamas, after which, the renewed category 5 storm is expected to pivot northwest to drive towards Florida. The storm has left destruction and 21 people dead in its wake in the past couple of days.
