Hurricane Idalia makes landfall in Florida
Hurricane Idalia made landfall near Keaton Beach in Florida’s Big Bend as a Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph and even higher gusts.
This makes Idalia the strongest storm to make landfall in the Big Bend region in more than 125 years.
Idalia is the third hurricane to make landfall in Florida in the last 12 months, following Hurricane Ian in September 2022 and and Hurricane Nicole in October 2022.
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Hurricane Idalia Intensifies: Florida’s West Coast Braces for Catastrophic Impact
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Biden will address Hurricane Idalia today
President Joe Biden will address Hurricane Idalia Wednesday afternoon as the Category 3 storm pummels Florida.
Biden, a White House official said, “will deliver remarks on the whole-of-government response and recovery efforts on Maui, Hawaii and the ongoing response from the federal government to Hurricane Idalia.”
Biden and his team have been in close touch with Florida officials, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, as the storm barrels toward the state, threatening devastating damage.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has pre-positioned resources to respond to the immediate impacts of Idalia. That includes “several Incident Management Assistance teams, Urban Search & Rescue teams, our Disaster Survivor Assistance teams” that “are ready to move to the most impacted areas immediately after the storm passes,” the official said.
FEMA, the official added, “also has warehouses filled with commodities like food, water, blankets, and medical supplies that ready to rapidly move into the impacted area at the state’s request.”
The official noted that the Army Corps of Engineers is pre-positioned for power restoration efforts and the Department of Health and Human Services “assisted with evacuations from hospitals and assisted living centers.”
Biden speaks at 1:45 p.m. ET in the Roosevelt Room.
More than 116,000 Floridians without power ahead of Idalia landfall
From CNN’s Melissa Alonso
There are about 116,000 Florida customers in the dark as Hurricane Idalia churns closer to the state, according to poweroutage.us.
As of 7:25 a.m. ET, the bulk of the outages are in the Big Bend region of the state. This includes Taylor County, with about 13,000 out; Dixie County, with about 10,000 outages; and Levy County, with about 8,000 outages.
In Wakulla County, located on the Florida Panhandle, about 10,000 customers are without power — which is about 57% of all customers in the county.
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