![]() “I’m worried about the storm surge and the water,” Evangelista said.Īs the Tampa Bay region recently learned during 2020′s Tropical Storm Eta, even a small surge can be wildly destructive. But he planned for those bags to do double duty as sandbags for the storm, he said. Several counties in the area also don’t have shelters that can withstand major winds, and instead were sending people into Tallahassee.Īt a Home Depot on Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa, Jim Evangelista looked to be making typical Saturday morning purchases: a green garden hose and giant bags of soil. ![]() A high percentage of residents in this poorer, more rural part of the state live in mobile homes - often the first structures to yield to hurricane winds. Officials there intensified their evacuation orders Tuesday, urging residents to get out of a region that hasn’t been directly hit by a major hurricane since the 1800s. If that’s the case, of course, not everyone will be spared.Įarly Wednesday morning, the storm is expected to rampage into the Big Bend area, the elbow of the state where the north-south coastline transitions to east-west. The projected distance between catastrophe and Tampa Bay’s century-old streak of near misses: about 100 miles. As Hurricane Idalia strengthened on Tuesday, so too did hope in Tampa Bay that the region would sustain a graze wound rather than a direct hit.Īs the storm ran parallel to Florida’s coast, forecasters’ confidence grew throughout Tuesday that Idalia would continue barreling through the unusually hot waters of the Gulf of Mexico, gathering force, while passing west of Tampa Bay overnight.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |