Hurricane Idalia puts 6168 homes from Florida coast in flood water
Hurricane Idalia hit some 6168 homes on the west coast of Florida with flood waters from storm surge, chiefly in cases of low-level flooding, satellite imaging and flood hazard specialist ICEYE has said of its first read on the event.
A full 93% of the affected homes, or 5766 of the count time-stamped to end-August 31, suffered only low-level flood waters of up to 2 feet (0.6m).
Another 5% or 313 were in flood waters of 2 to 5 feet (0.6 - 1.5m), 80 in 5 to 8 feet of water (1.5 - 2.4m) and only nine in flood waters in excess of 9 feet.
The analysis from the micro-satellite operator follows Wednesday morning’s landfall of Cat-3 hurricane Idalia on the Big Bend of the Florida Gulf Coast.
The hurricane struck the centre of a sparsely populated stretch of the coastline also not known for excessive property values. Taylor county, home to the Keaton Beach landfall epicentre, bears a 2020 population of just 21,796, rendering only 21 persons per square mile (per 8km2).
But storm surge warnings had covered a much larger swathe of the coast, including to the more susceptible right side and stretching to the more densely populated regions around Tampa.
In the event, flooding at the Cedar Key station right of landfall peaked at levels below 7 feet and the Clearwater Beach station, at the northern side of the Tampa Bay region, only ever flirted with the 4 foot mark, National Weather Service data indicated.
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