Tropical storm Idalia is finally moving off from North Carolina and southern Virginia, into the Atlantic. In spite of earlier speculation by some forecasters 48 hours ago, Idalia will not circle around and hit Florida again. Yes, there was some talk that Idalia would circle back after entering the Atlanta and cross Florida as a “regular” old tropical storm. Instead it looks like it will chase after Franklin across the northern Atlantic.

Now begins the cleanup phase (which had already started in those areas Idalia had passed through). It’s going to be long and expensive. And for those communities on the Gulf coast of Florida, they’re going to have to ask themselves if they really want to rebuild in the area, or move away. Idalia’s Florida landfall wasn’t nearly as destructive to human property as Ian’s because the Big Bend area isn’t as heavily developed as on Florida’s southern Gulf coast, but it was destructive enough, especially as it traveled up through Florida into south Georgia and beyond.

Idalia was frightening to me because it remained a hurricane all the way into south Georgia. After traveling across the lower southeastern U.S. it still remained an organized tropical storm.  While hurricane Idalia was still in south Georgia, northern edges of the storm reached as far north as Atlanta’s southern suburbs. That’s a huge storm. Hurricanes are growing more violent (category 4 is no longer unusual) and far larger than “storms of old.” The old idea you could move further inland to avoid such storms is now a thing of the past.

And we still have three more months in the hurrican season. September 1st is tomorrow, and September is the height of the season. What are we going to face over the next 90 days?

Details

The app in the capture is Apple’s Weather app on macOS. This post was written on a 13″ 2020 M1 MacBook Pro, which I purchased on sale December 2021. I used the WordPress stand-alone application instead of the web page.

Idalia appears to be coming ashore near Steinhatchee, Florida. As I was writing this post reports came in that Idalia made landfall at Keaton Beach, just northwest of Steinhatchee, at around 8am. Wind speeds had dropped just enough that Idalia was “downgraded” from category 4 to category 3. But still, it’s a devastating disaster from Tampa all up the Gulf coast to Tallahassee.

What is remarkable is to look at the map and see Idalia’s influence up into south Georgia, all the way to Savannah and Charleston, SC. It also shows why you don’t want a hurricane to pass under you. The northwest quadrant is where the most wind and rain is generated in a hurricane. Orlando is still getting rain bands, with intermittent rain and wind. Nothing like Florida’s Big Bend area.