Irma is just about at Southern Florida as of 4PM EST Friday.
Not quite. Still at least 24 hours before it makes landfall in Florida. The southern region of the state will start to feel the impacts in the next few hours though, with that increasing in intensity for the next couple of days.
Cat 4 right now. Most def going to hit South Florida at this point according to reports.
Jose Cat 4 behind it looks like it may head East away from Florida, but some said this about Irma. Could clip the same set of islands that were devastated already.
There's very little chance Jose hits the US. The ridge that was pushing Irma west has mostly eroded, and will allow steering winds to take Jose north and eventually east, away from the States.
They had an owner of a bar in Key Largo on CNN last night. He said he was actually going to go south to Key West instead of evacuating north. He didn't want the storm to chase him into the traffic, and at the time given the cone, it didn't seem like a half-bad idea, but now it's moving back west, putting more of the state in danger. Another storm where I've never seen it move the way it is moving where it is forecasted to go directly up the peninsula. It'll be much different than the people there are probably used to when it comes to landfalling hurricanes. When it comes to evacuations, there's nowhere for a lot of these people to go. I have a friend who lives in Florida, he didn't get out early, but he didn't hit a lot of traffic as he knew a lot of the backroads and traffic was light.
This is a horrific idea that could get people killed.
The storm is going to weaken pretty rapidly once it makes landfall.
Key West is going to be impacted significantly by storm surge, something that won't be an issue on the mainland and further up the peninsula. Key West is also likely to see a direct hit from a potential Cat. 5 hurricane.
I hope he's reconsidered.
Evacuations aren't meant to get you out of the storms' path entirely, but to get you out of the regions that will be largely impossible to survive in. A storm surge of 10+ feet and winds gusting up to 200 miles per hour is obviously much, much worse than some heavy rain and 60ish mile per hour winds for several hours.