Storm surge flooding has already reached several feet high in some areas ahead of the Category 3 hurricane’s landfall.
Footage emerging on social media from western Florida shows storm surge from Hurricane Idalia already causing several feet of flooding in coastal regions, in one case knocking out a weather monitoring live camera.
The tropical cyclone is expected to make landfall around noon ET on Wednesday after strengthening to a Category 4 storm, bringing winds in excess of 130 miles an hour. Meteorologists predict Idalia will travel across northern Florida, before moving through Georgia and up the coasts of the Carolinas.
The National Hurricane Center foresees coastal storm surges of as much as 16 feet above ground level and destructive waves in Florida’s Big Bend. It also warned of potentially « life-threatening winds » when the core of the storm makes landfall and flooding in parts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina into Thursday.
One live camera placed in Horseshoe Beach, located on the Big Bend, was entirely knocked out by surging floodwater shortly after the break of dawn. Before the feed went out, tall waves pushed by high wind could be seen washing over the camera.
One social media user called the footage « really crazy. »
The National Weather Service in Tallahassee, an area that could fall in the path of the hurricane, described the storm as « an unprecedented event » as no major hurricanes on record have ever moved into the Apalachee Bay, which sits at the northern end of the Big Bend.
