Hurricane Idalia will make landfall in Florida within a matter of hours, bringing “life-threatening” storm surge to the Big Bend region, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned.
In an early morning press briefing, he said that the category 4 storm would barrel into the state with winds in excess of 130mph by around 8am ET on Wednesday.
“Don’t mess with this storm,” he said. “Don’t do anything that will put yourself in jeapardy.”
The briefing itself was hit with a brief power outage as the storm surge and hurricane-strength winds are already plunging thousands of homes into darkness.
The National Hurricane Center said in an update at around 5am ET that the storm had intensified from category 3 to category 4.
Idalia has already forced mass evacuations in low-lying areas and the state activated 55,000 national guardsmen and 25,000 electric linemen ahead of the hurricane’s arrival.
A terrifying forecast model has also shown that Hurricane Idalia could hit the state of Florida twice over the coming week. Global Forecasting System, a federal hurricane projection model, forecasts that Idalia will first make landfall on Florida’s big bend region on Wednesday morning.