PANAMA CITY, Fla. — Hurricane Michael, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the continental United States, slammed into the Florida Panhandle on Wednesday, unleashing a trail of destruction across 200 miles that splintered houses, peeled off roofs and stirred up a terrifying surge of seawater that submerged entire neighborhoods and sent boats careening down city streets.
A storm that was initially forecast to arrive as a tropical storm instead amped up to furious intensity, hitting landfall just after midday near the small seaside community of Mexico Beach, 100 miles southwest of Tallahassee, with winds topping 155 miles per hour.
Images from there showed swaths of shattered debris where houses once stood and structures inundated up to their rooftops; the streets of Panama City, farther west, were blocked by downed tree limbs and impossible tangles of power lines. Recreational vehicles, trucks and even trains were pushed over, surrounded by new lakes of water.
[For the latest updates, read our Hurricane Michael live briefing]
“Hurricane Michael is the worst storm that the Florida Panhandle has ever seen,” said Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, where 375,000 people were ordered evacuated from the western part of the state.
The storm was officially classified as a Category 4 — on the verge of Category 5 — but weakened as it continued its rapid advance up toward Georgia and the Carolinas, where cities still reeling from Hurricane Florence prepared for another onslaught of rain and wind. It was downgraded to a tropical storm at midnight on Wednesday.
Just about every update seemed to bring greater grimness: closed bridges, more towering waves, suspended emergency services, admonitions that the time to evacuate had passed. The National Hurricane Center reported a 130-mile-per-hour wind gust near the evacuated Tyndall Air Force Base — and said that the measuring instrument had then failed.
A man died in Greensboro, Fla., northwest of Tallahassee, after a tree crashed down on his home late Wednesday afternoon, local law enforcement officials confirmed.
For more read the full of article at The Nytimes
