AccuWeather: Economic damages from Idalia to reach $20 billion
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The potent hurricane unleashed a fierce storm surge along Florida's Gulf Coast before it carved a path of destruction across northern Florida and southern Georgia.
Idalia gradually lost wind intensity as it moved over land and was downgraded into a tropical storm over southeastern Georgia by 5 p.m. EDT Wednesday evening. By Thursday morning, the center of Idalia was hovering off of the coast near the North Carolina-South Carolina border.
Two men were killed in weather-related crashes amid Idalia's rampage across the Southeast on Wednesday, and the fatalities may end up being storm-related, according to Florida Governir Ron DeSantis. The Governor's Mansion in Tallahassee had a 100-year-old tree fall in its yard.
Officials issued stark warnings about the "catastrophic" storm surge and "extreme wind warnings" as Idalia barreled toward the Florida coastline.
Nearly half of a million power outages resulted from the storm across Florida and Georgia, according to PowerOutage.us.
Winds gusted to 85 mph in Florida and over 60 mph in Georgia and the South Carolina coast. The number of outages has decreased since peaking on Wednesday, falling to around 310,000 by late Wednesday night.
As Idalia charged ashore in Florida, the storm surge peaked at nearly 9 feet at Cedar Key. This was the first time a hurricane passed through the Apalachee Bay and made landfall since the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane.
Travel disruptions were widespread with a total of 1,000 flight cancellations and 2,000 flight delays being tallied by FlightAware on Wednesday, although Tampa International Airport, which closed on Tuesday before Idalia arrived, announced that it will be resuming operations as the hurricane moves away from Florida. The airport opened to arriving flights starting at 4 p.m. EDT Wednesday, with departing flights expected to resume early Thursday morning.
Hurricane Idalia triggered an intense storm surge as seen in footage captured in Cedar Key, Florida, on Wednesday morning. Video shows high water slamming into a building there, a good example of how the speed and motion of storm surge add to the destruction a hurricane can unleash.
And the dangers weren't limited to destructive storm surge and hurricane-force winds. Tornado watches were hoisted from Florida to the Carolinas as Idalia approached Florida and moved inland.
A brief and weak tornado touched down and flipped a car in Goose Creek, South Carolina, northwest of Charleston, on Wednesday afternoon. A dramatic video of the spectacle was captured by a passenger in another car. Two people were injured in the incident, WCBD reported.
AccuWeather’s preliminary estimate of the total damage and economic loss from Hurricane Idalia in the southeastern United States is $18 billion to $20 billion.
Coastal inundation and surge levels where the storm moved inland rivaled those of Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers last year.
However, the Big Bend area of the state is far less populated than the area devastated by Ian, accounting for a vast difference in total damages. The population was approximately 1 million within 30 miles of Ian’s landfall. In comparison, about 38,000 people live within that distance of Idalia’s landfall. ■