Hurricane update

Yahoo has an article via The Associated Press by Tamara Lush and Jay Reeves about Irma:

Announcing itself with roaring 130 mph winds, Hurricane Irma plowed into the mostly emptied-out Florida Keys early Sunday for the start of what could be a slow, ruinous march up the state's west coast toward the heavily populated Tampa-St. Petersburg area.
"Pray, pray for everybody in Florida," Florida Governor Rick Scott said on Fox News Sunday.
With more than estimated a hundred thousand people huddling in shelters statewide, the storm lashed the low-lying string of islands with drenching rain and knocked out power to over a million customers, many of them hundreds of miles from Irma's center.
In downtown Miami, one of two dozen construction cranes looming over the skyline collapsed atop a high-rise in Irma's winds. There were no immediate reports of any damage or injuries.
About thirty thousand people heeded orders to evacuate the Keys as the storm closed in, but an untold number refused to leave, in part because, to many storm-hardened residents, staying behind in the face of danger is a point of pride. (Idiots, Rico says.)
While the projected track showed Irma raking the state's Gulf Coast, forecasters warned that the entire Florida peninsula, including the Miami metropolitan area of six million people, was in extreme peril from the monstrous storm, now almost four hundred miles wide. Nearly seven million people in the Southeast were warned to get out of the storm's path, including over six million in Florida alone.
The Republican governor, Rick Scott, said on NBC that he spoke to President Donald Trump, and "everything I've asked out of the Federal government, he's made sure he gave us." Once the storm passes, "we're going to need a lot of help," Scott warned. But he also described Florida as "a tough state. We are going to come through this."
Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Brock Long said on Fox News Sunday that: "Once this system passes through, it's going to be a race to save lives and sustain lives." With FEMA still dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas, Irma could test the agency's ability to handle two disasters at the same time.
Irma made landfall just after 0900 at Cudjoe Key, about twenty miles outside Key West, forecasters said. By late morning, it was advancing toward Florida's southwestern corner, moving at just nine mph.
As the hurricane's eye approached the Keys, sixty-year-old Carol Walterson Stroud and her family were huddled in a third-floor apartment in Key West.
"We are good so far," she said in a text message just before 0530. "It's blowing hard."
Key West Police urged anyone riding out the storm in that city to "resist the urge" to go outside during the eye, the deceptively calm interlude in the middle of a hurricane. "Dangerous winds will follow quickly," police said in a Facebook post.
John Huston, who was riding out the storm at his Key Largo home, was already seeing flooding in his yard before the arrival of high tide. "Small boats floating down the street next to furniture and refrigerators. Very noisy," he said by text message. "Shingles are coming off."
Irma was at one time the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the open Atlantic, with a peak wind speed of 185 mph last week. It left more than twenty people dead across the Caribbean and, as it moved north over the Gulf of Mexico's bathtub-warm water of nearly ninety degrees, regained strength.
Forecasters said Irma could hit the Tampa-St. Petersburg areas early Monday. The Tampa Bay area has not taken a direct hit from a major hurricane since 1921, when its population was only about ten thousand, National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen said. Now around three million people live there.
Some four hundred miles north of the Keys, the wind was picking up in St. Petersburg and people began bracing for the storm's wrath. "I've been here with other storms, other hurricanes. But this one scares me," Sally Carlson said she snapped photos of the waves crashing against boats. "Let's just say a prayer we hope we make it through."
John Leuders, another St. Petersburg resident, said he felt confident of his preparations: "We tore down part of our fence because we couldn't get any plywood from Home Depot or Lowe's, and we boarded up with the fence."
The governor activated all seven thousand members of the Florida National Guard, and thirty thousand Guardsmen from elsewhere were on standby.
Even before the extent of its potential devastation was clear, the storm made a huge swath of the peninsula's bottom half unrecognizable. Normally bustling streets were ghost towns. Famed party stretches, including Duval Street in Key West and Ocean Drive on Miami's South Beach, were shuttered. Sunday church services were called off, and theme parks were closed.
The effects spilled far beyond Florida. Hotels were sold out as far north as Atlanta, Georgia. Forecasters warned that, after churning up Florida's west coast, a weakened Irma could push into Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and beyond. A tropical storm warning was issued for the first time ever in Atlanta, some two hundred miles from the sea. Given its mammoth size and strength and its projected course, Irma could prove one of the most devastating hurricanes ever to hit Florida, and inflict damage on a scale not seen here in 25 years.
Hurricane Andrew smashed into suburban Miami, Florida in 1992, with winds topping 165 mph  damaging or blowing apart over a hundred thousand homes. The damage in Florida totaled twenty-six billion dollars, and at least 40 people died.

Rico says it's getting ugly, but he's still happy he didn't move to the Keys...