Hurricane Irma Live Updates: Packing 130-M.P.H. Winds, Storm Roars Into the Florida Keys
Hurricane Irma's Eye Passes Over Florida Keys
Hurricane Irma churned toward the Florida Keys after leaving a path of destruction across the Caribbean.
By CAMILLA SCHICK, ROBIN LINDSAY and CHRIS CIRILLO on Publish Date September 6, 2017. Photo by Martin Bureau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. Watch in Times Video »
Packing winds of 130 miles per hour, Hurricane Irma’s eye began passing over the Florida Keys on Sunday morning after leaving a path of destruction across the Caribbean.
The storm’s northern eye wall hit the Lower Keys about 7:20 a.m. Eastern, the National Hurricane Center said, and the eye itself was 15 miles southeast of Key West.
The storm, which was about 30 miles offshore around 6 a.m., was expected to rake the state’s west coast — a change from earlier predictions that left some residents and officials scrambling to find shelter. The new track could expose St. Petersburg — rather than Miami or Tampa — to a direct hit.
St. Petersburg, like Tampa, has not taken a head-on blow from a major hurricane in nearly a century, according to The Associated Press.
The National Hurricane Center upgraded Irma to a Category 4 hurricane at 2 a.m., saying it would cross the Lower Florida Keys during the following several hours. The storm was then expected to move up the state’s west coast, before heading inland over the Panhandle and into Georgia on Monday afternoon.
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Here’s the latest:
• More than 300,000 people in Florida were without power Sunday morning. Keys Energy Services, which supplies electricity to Key West and the Lower Florida Keys, said that all of its 29,000 customers were without power.
• At least 25 people have been confirmed dead in parts of the Caribbean affected by Irma. The hurricane made landfall in Cuba on Friday evening — the first Category 5 hurricane to hit the island since 1924. President Raúl Castro said there had been serious damage to the country’s power grid. The newspaper Granma said there had been unprecedented flooding in parts of Havana.
• Florida officials have ordered more than 6.5 million residents to leave their homes, one of the largest emergency evacuations in American history. About 540,000 people were told to leave the Georgia coast. Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina have declared states of emergency. Here are our maps tracking the storm.
• Gov. Rick Scott warned on Saturday night that the state could get as much as 18 inches of rain, with the Keys getting up to 25 inches. Southwest Florida could see a storm surge of 15 feet above ground level, and entire neighborhoods stretching northward from Naples to Tampa Bay could be submerged.
• Separately, Hurricane Jose, a Category 4 storm, was passing farther north of the Leeward Islands than initially predicted.
• Sign up for the Morning Briefing for hurricane news and for a look at what you need to know to begin your day.
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