The National Hurricane Center claims Hurricane Irma it is the strongest Hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic basin. It has an area of 65,000 square miles and has sustained winds of 185 mph with some gusts raging at over 200mph.
5,000 people were evacuated from the Bahamas to the mainland of the US. The island of St. Marten in the French Caribbean which has 75,000 residents was pounded today and supplies were shipped there to the people stranded without food and water.
The US government announced that preparations should be made to brace for the hurricane. The Miami Dade County issued warnings of a potential evacuation of the entire county should Irma turn northward toward Florida. Moving at 16 miles an hour and having less than 200 miles till Florida, it may hit Florida by midday Thursday. If it turns even more northward it may not hit land until the Carolinas.
There are various computer models predicting Irma’s path and almost none of them predict it will go deep into the Gulf of Mexico toward Texas which was already hit by Harvey. Rather it will probably hit Florida as mentioned or possibly travel more north in the Atlantic and hit land in the Carolinas.
President Trump said “this storm won’t be good. We will see what we can do.” Irma will be the second really destructive hurricane to hit the US within 2 weeks. It would seem that prayer is a good idea.