FLORIDA, USA—Hurricane Irma, rampaging across the Caribbean towards the Bahamas and south Florida, is smashing not only homes and hotels but weather records as well.
The most powerful Atlantic Ocean hurricane in recorded history has killed at least 14 people after tearing through the Caribbean, and is no on course to “devastate the United States,” the Federal Emergency Management Agency has warned.
Irma is now heading towards Florida, which is on high alert and has ordered half a million people to evacuate. The Carolinas and Georgia have also declared emergencies.
The Category 5 storm, had maximum sustained wind speeds of 295 kilometers per hour on Thursday (Friday in Manila), according to the US National Hurricane Center, for more than 33 hours, longer than any cyclone of comparable power ever recorded, France’s weather service said.
“Such an intensity, for such a long period, has never been observed in the satellite era,” which began in the early 1970s, said Etienne Kapikian, a forecaster at Meteo France.
Meanwhile, in Manila, the Philippine government has placed its embassies in Washington and Mexico on a higher state of readiness to allow them to immediately come to the rescue of Filipinos in the United States and the Caribbean who may be impacted by Hurricane Irma.
“We have seen how powerful and destructive Hurricane Irma is,” Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said after receiving initial reports of the damage the category 5 hurricane had inflicted on several Caribbean islands.
“We should not be taking any chances and should be ready to assist our nationals who may get caught in the middle of this storm,” Cayetano added. “©”©
He said he had instructed Chargé d’Affaires Patrick Chuasoto of the Philippine Embassy in Washington, D.C. and Ambassador Eduardo De Vega of the Philippine Embassy in Mexico to be ready to deploy teams to hurricane-affected areas in case there were Filipino nationals there who would need assistance. “©
Cayetano had also instructed the office of the Migrant Workers Affairs to make sure that funds were available to assist Filipinos who would be affected by the hurricane. “©”©
Described by weather experts as the most powerful storm in the Atlantic in over a decade, Irma left a trail of death and destruction after it swept across the islands of Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, St. Barthelemy, and St. Martin.
The storm has left at least nine dead so far and untold damage in the affected areas. “©”©
Cayetano said the Department of Foreign Affairs was still waiting for reports on the condition of Filipinos in the affected areas.
According to the Philippine Embassy in Washington, there are 72 Filipinos in Anguilla; 32 in Antigua and Barbuda; and 264 in the British Virgin Islands. “©”©
Of particular concern to the DFA, according to Cayetano, is Turks and Caicos, which host a Filipino population of around 2,327, the largest in the Caribbean.
The islands, with a population of more than 31,000, is at risk of a storm surge with destructive waves as high as 20 feet.”©”©
Hurricane Irma will also make landfall in Florida, with a Filipino population of more than 150,000, if it continues in its present destructive path.
The runner up to Irma is Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7,000 people dead or missing in the Philippines and packed winds of nearly 300 km/h for 24 hours in 2013.
Category 5 tropical storms, the highest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale, produce sustained winds of more than 252 km/h.
Irma may remain at Category 5 for another day or two, by which time it will be at Florida’s doorstep, Kapikian told AFP.
“Most scenarios track the hurricane through the Miami region,” he added. “When it hits, it will likely be at least a Category 4 storm.”
Irma set another record by reaching such intensity without having entered the balmy waters of the Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico, historically the incubators of mega hurricanes.
Tropical storms gather strength from ocean waters above 26 degree Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit).
“What is remarkable about Irma–and this is a first–is that it reached Category 5 before it arrived at the Caribbean,” said Patrick Galois another forecaster at Meteo France.
The fact that the violently-swirling mass of clouds and water was able to turbo-charge over the Atlantic — whose waters are colder than the Caribbean but warmer than a few decades ago–is consistent with climate change, noted Fabrice Chauvin, a scientist at France’s National Center of Meteorological Research in Toulouse.
26 million at risk
“This becomes more probable in a warming world,” he told AFP, while noting there is not enough data to link global warming to any particular storm.
Other climate scientists made the same point, even if connecting the dots remains a challenge.
“Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Harvey fit within the long-term trend toward fewer but increasingly powerful hurricanes,” said James Baldini, a hurricane expert at Durham University in England.
They are “a direct result of rising North Atlantic sea surface temperatures under global warming.”
Hurricane Harvey devastated the Houston region of Texas in late August, dropping more than 125 centimeters (50 inches) of rain in some areas.
Irma has already “battered” 1.2 million people, the Red Cross said Thursday, warning the storm could upend the lives of as many as 26 million in the coming days. At least five people are reported dead.
The hurricane is the most powerful ever recorded in the Atlantic basin outside of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, according to the US National Hurricane Center.
It shares the record for the strongest to make landfall anywhere in the Atlantic basin with a Category Five storm packing 295-km/h winds that hit Florida in 1935, Kapikian said.
And if Irma keeps its top-level status through Sunday, it could challenge the 1961 Typhoon Nancy in the northwest Pacific as the longest continuous Category 5 storm on record. With Sara Susanne Fabunan