4:00 Update
Data from an Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft indicate that Idalia continues to rapidly intensify. The maximum sustained winds have increased to 125 mph (205 km/h) with higher gusts.
Idalia's pressure is dropping quickly. The estimated minimum pressure indicated by dropsonde data from an Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft is 941 mb (27.79 inches).
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...125 MPH...205 KM/H
“This has the makings of an unprecedented event for this part of the state,” the National Weather Service in Tallahassee said. “To put this system into the historical context, there are NO major hurricanes in the historical dataset going back to 1851 that have tracked into Apalachee Bay. None.
Much of the Big Bend area – the curved coastline that connects Florida’s Panhandle to the rest of the Florida Peninsula – is forecast to see storm surge of 12 to 16 feet – the hurricane center said..
Police in Perry, a city in the Big Bend area, cautioned residents against trying to “‘ride’ this one out.”
Storm surge higher than 15 feet is “not survivable if you are caught in it,” Perry police said.
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCUAT5+shtml/300800.shtml----------------------------------------------------
“They’re expecting some fatalities, so I don’t want to be one of them,” said Rene Hoffman, 62, of Steinhatchee, Florida, a coastal town in the area where Idalia is expected to make landfall. She owns a food stand that she lashed to her husband’s pickup truck to keep it from washing or blowing away.
“This is scary, you know, to think that water could come this high,” she said as she gathered her prescription medications and prepared to leave her home. “We’ve never had water up here before.“
The owner of a marina in Florida's gulf coast town of
Steinhatchee told CNN he is choosing to stay put despite local evacuation orders.
“We’re all worried and that’s why we’re staying here -- to see if there’s anything we can do to protect what we have,” Chase Norwood, owner of Chase-N-Fish Charters at Sea Hag Marina, told CNN Tuesday night.
Norwood said the marina is his family's livelihood, leaving him determined to preserve it as much as possible.
Last year, Norwood helped with storm damage in Fort Meyers after Hurricane Ian hit the area.
“We saw stuff we didn’t know a storm could do and it was an eye-opener,” he said.
Lori Leigh Batts-Bennett has already evacuated her condo in Steinhatchee to Jacksonville, Florida and worries for those that stayed behind. Steinhatchee is about 70 miles west of Gainseville.
“Some have that mentality of ‘I’m going to stay here and take care of my own,’” Batts-Bennett told CNN. “Once people wake up they’re going to be paralyzed with what they see.”
The town does not have the infrastructure to handle these storms, Batts-Bennett explained on the brink of tears. She said she and others have started forming plans for how to help tomorrow when it’s safe, mentioning they have people with air boats on standby.
“I fear that if this is catastrophic, the people that make Steinhatchee will not be able to be in Steinhatchee because they won’t be able to rebuild,” she said.
“The landscape of Steinhatchee will be changed forever,” she added.
