WATCH VIDEO: Hurricane Irma churns north through Florida, onward to Georgia
This video credits to washingtonpost
winds, tornadoes and storm-surge flooding too much of Florida's lower half on Sunday, as its slow-moving core battered the state's west coast from Key West to Tampa.
The massive storm which had menaced Florida for days, and triggered evacuation orders covering 5.6 million people - made two officials landfalls on Sunday before being downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane Monday.
The first landfall, at about 9:10 a.m., was over the Florida Keys, an isolated string of islands that had rarely felt more alone than on Sunday. Irma hit them as a Category 4 hurricane, with sustained winds near 130 mile per hour.
Little was heard from the island for hours afterward because resident here had no way to connect with the outside world. Thought hit with lengthy periods of hurricane conditions that led to significant flooding in well-known tourist areas, Key West was largely spared the onslaught that many featured. But the island was left with no power, water or cellphone service.
After the Keys, Irma crossed over warm waters and hit the U.S. mainland at last , about six hours later, near the beach town of Marco Island. By 5 p.m., the storm was hitting For Myers, moving north toward low-lying, vulnerable Tampa as a still-potent Category 2 storm.
But it was misleading to speak of this storm as 'hitting' one city.
By the end of the Sunday, Florida officials said there were shelters open in 64 of Florida's 67 countries - 573 shelters across the state, holding 155,000 people. More than 4.2 million customers, about 40 percent of the state, were without power as of 4 a.m Monday.
Source: washingtonpost
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