{"id":4780,"date":"2018-10-11T13:55:39","date_gmt":"2018-10-11T09:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/?p=4780"},"modified":"2018-10-11T13:55:39","modified_gmt":"2018-10-11T09:55:39","slug":"hurricane-michael-record-breaking-storm-mauls-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/2018\/10\/11\/hurricane-michael-record-breaking-storm-mauls-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Hurricane Michael: Record-breaking storm mauls US"},"content":{"rendered":"

The most powerful hurricane ever to hit north-west Florida has flooded beach towns, submerging homes and snapping trees like twigs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hurricane Michael made landfall on Wednesday afternoon as a category four storm with 155mph (250km\/h) winds in the state’s Panhandle region.<\/p>\n

Two people, including a child, were killed by falling trees, officials say.<\/p>\n

The storm left nearly 500,000 people without electricity in Florida, Alabama and Georgia, emergency services say.<\/p>\n

Florida officials said a man was killed when he was crushed by a tree in Gadsden County.<\/p>\n

It was later reported that a child was killed when a tree fell on a home in Seminole County, Georgia, as Hurricane Michael continued to sweep across the south-east, CBS news reports.<\/p>\n

Michael earlier reportedly killed at least 13 people as it passed through Central America: six in Honduras, four in Nicaragua and three in El Salvador.<\/p>\n

How powerful was Michael when it hit?<\/h2>\n

Michael was so powerful as it swept into Florida that it remained a hurricane as it moved further inland.<\/p>\n

Its rapid intensification caught many by surprise, although the storm later weakened.<\/p>\n

Unusually warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico turbo-charged the storm from a tropical depression on Sunday.<\/p>\n

It was a category two hurricane by Tuesday, and a borderline category five – the highest level – on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

Florida Governor Rick Scott warned of “unimaginable devastation”, saying it would be the worst storm in 100 years.<\/p>\n

“We are in new territory,” Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) meteorologist Dennis Feltgen wrote on Facebook.<\/p>\n

“The historical record, going back to 1851, finds no category four hurricane ever hitting the Florida Panhandle.”<\/p>\n

Reuters news agency reports that Michael is the third-most powerful storm ever to make landfall in the mainland US, after Hurricane Camille in Mississippi in 1969 and the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 in Florida.<\/p>\n

More than 370,000 people in Florida were ordered to evacuate, but officials believe many ignored the warning.<\/p>\n

What happened in Florida?<\/h2>\n

The hurricane made landfall near Mexico Beach, Florida, at around 14:00 (18:00 GMT) on Wednesday, according to the NHC.<\/p>\n

The coastal city of Apalachicola reported a storm surge of nearly 8ft (2.5m).<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

“We are catching some hell,” Timothy Thomas, who rode out the storm with his wife in their home in Panama City Beach, Florida, told the Associated Press news agency.<\/p>\n

As Michael continues to move, the storm has already knocked out power to a quarter of a million homes and businesses, as power lines were smashed by falling trees.<\/p>\n

Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Brock Long said at the White House that he was especially concerned about buildings constructed before 2001, and not able to withstand such high winds.<\/p>\n

“We just hope those structures can hold up,” President Donald Trump responded. “And if not, that they’re not in those structures.”<\/p>\n

\n

States of emergency have been declared in all or parts of Florida, Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina.<\/p>\n

The National Weather Service (NWS) had issued a dramatic appeal for the people of the Florida state capital, Tallahassee, to heed warnings and leave their homes.<\/p>\n

Schools and state offices in the area are to remain shut this week.<\/p>\n

Florida has activated 3,500 National Guard troops.<\/p>\n

What happens next?<\/h2>\n

In the early hours of Thursday, Hurricane Michael’s maximum sustained winds decreased to 75mph,\u00a0the NHC said in a bulletin.<\/p>\n

“Michael will steadily weaken as it crosses the south-eastern United States through Thursday night, becoming a tropical storm by Thursday morning.<\/p>\n

“Michael is forecast to re-strengthen some Thursday night and Friday when it moves off the east coast of the United States and becomes a post-tropical cyclone on Friday,” the NHC added.<\/p>\n

More than 300 miles of coastline remained under threat, the NWS said.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

BBC<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The most powerful hurricane ever to hit north-west Florida has flooded beach towns, submerging homes and snapping trees like twigs. Hurricane Michael made landfall on Wednesday afternoon as a category four storm with 155mph (250km\/h) winds in the state’s Panhandle region. Two people, including a child, were killed by falling trees, officials say. The storm …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4781,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4785,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4780\/revisions\/4785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}