Tropical Storm Idalia is barreling through the Carolinas on its way to the Atlantic Ocean after leaving a trail of flooding and devastation throughout the Southeast.
Tropical Storm Idalia descended on the Carolinas on its way out to the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday, leaving a trail of flooding and destruction in the Southeast stretching back to Florida, where it first roared ashore as a major hurricane.
Rescue and repair efforts continued in Florida’s remote Big Bend area where Idalia made landfall Wednesday. Thus far, authorities have only confirmed only one death, that of a man hit by a falling tree in Georgia.
The storm’s ferocious winds left as many as a half-million customers without power in Florida and other states as it ripped down power poles and lines.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he planned to tour the area with officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Thursday. He noted that Idalia was far less destructive than feared, providing only glancing blows to Tampa Bay and other more populated areas as it came ashore with 125 mph (201 kph) winds in rural Florida. In contrast, Hurricane Ian last year hit the heavily populated Fort Myers area, leaving 149 dead in the state.
Ian “came in basically at a Category 5 … in a much more populated area, so more opportunity I think to have destruction, whereas I think this one, there was definitely a lot of destruction but it was so much debris and so much woods and that’s just going to require a lot to clean all that up,” he said.
Idalia was still blowing with winds up to 60 mph (96 kph) when it reached coastal North Carolina on Thursday morning. Tropical storm-force winds extended outward up to 185 miles (295 kilometers). Idalia was expected to travel just off the North Carolina coast Thursday without losing much of its strength and gradually weaken as it rolls off into the Atlantic Ocean through the weekend. Swells were expected to affect the southeastern coast, likely causing life-threatening surf and rip current conditions into the Labor Day weekend.
