Irma weakens to tropical storm, continues its crawl to Columbus

The damage from Irma is estimated around $100 billion or 0.5 of a percentage point of U.S. GDP of $19 trillion.

Recently planted palm trees lie strewn across the road as Hurricane Irma passes by, Sunday, Sept. 10, 2017, in Miami Beach, Fla.

Tens of thousands of people huddling in shelters watched for updates as the storm swung to the west, now potentially sparing Tampa as well Miami the catastrophic head-on blow forecasters had been warning about.

FPL chose to shut only one of the two reactors at its Turkey Point nuclear plant on Saturday because the storm track shifted, and plans to leave both reactors at the St. Lucie plant in service because hurricane force winds are no longer expected to hit the sites.

Widespread threats from Hurricane Irma prompted Georgia’s governor to declare an emergency Sunday for the entire state, where coastal Savannah was evacuated for the second time in less than a year and Atlanta faced its first-ever tropical storm warning.

“This is obviously not the worst case scenario for Florida overall”, Maue said.

Irma has completed its life cycle, downgraded from Hurricane to Tropical Storm to Tropical Depression to now Post-Tropical Cyclone. And they’re likely to see a large storm surge there, still these high winds, an area that, you know, hasn’t – I mean, no one can prepare for a hurricane quite like that.

“What happened was the storm continued – after interacting with Cuba – to move west-northwest”, Jones said.

Trump also encouraged officials to also stay focused on recovery efforts in southeast Texas following Hurricane Harvey, which caused severe flooding in Houston and surrounding areas after it made landfall in late August.

Officials warned that Irma’s heavy storm surge – seawater driven on land by high winds – could bring floods of up to 4.6 m along the state’s western Gulf Coast. The storm is expected to begin dying down by tonight, at least the winds are.

“It’s terrible, what we saw”, Scott said.

According to the Miami Herald report and the Miami-Dade police, Cara Kesling gave birth to a little girl named Nayiri Storm.

DeMaria said the National Hurricane Center on the west campus of Florida International University, has received several gusts close to or over 100 miles per hour.