Hurricane Irma: all the news on one of the strongest hurricanes to hit the Atlantic

Flying salt spray and hurricane-force winds changed the green islands of the Caribbean to brown in Hurricane Irma’s wake, new satellite photos reveal.

The storm hit the Caribbean last week with the full force of its Category 5 winds. Irma devastated islands like Barbuda and St. Martin, and killed at least 33 people.

People who want to help sea turtle nests battered by Hurricane Irma should leave the eggs and hatchlings alone, wildlife officials say. Instead, call the experts, because good intentions don’t necessarily make for good results.

Sea turtle nests on Florida’s beaches are facing dangerous coastal flooding in the wake of Hurricane Irma, which has been downgraded to a tropical storm as it whirls toward Georgia. But well-meaning humans are sometimes bigger threats than they realize. Remember the bison calf in Yellowstone that tourists tried to “rescue” from the cold by putting it in their car? The calf’s herd rejected it after rangers tried to reintroduce it, and the calf was ultimately euthanized.

Irma has passed over Florida causing at least four deaths, and leaving 5.8 million people — or more than half those in the state — without electricity. On Monday, the Category 5 hurricane, which broke several records, was downgraded to Category 1 and is now a tropical storm after spending the weekend blowing over Florida. It hit the Florida Keys early Sunday morning with winds of 130 minds per hour. Two hours later, it made landfall at Cudjoe Key, an island in the Lower Keys.

According to Florida officials, shelters were open in 64 of Florida’s 67 counties, holding 155,000 people. About 58 percent of the state’s customers didn’t have electricity as of Monday morning.

As Hurricane Irma bears down on Florida, Tesla issued an over-the-air update to drivers in the state that unlocks the full battery capacity of its 60 and 70 kilowatt-hour Model S and X vehicles. The update provides those trying to escape the path of the storm with an additional 30 to 40 miles above the typical range of the vehicle, according to Electrek.

Tesla’s 60 and 60D vehicles offer a range of just above 200 miles on a charge. Faced with an order to leave, one Tesla owner contacted the company, saying that they needed an additional 30 miles of range to get out of the mandatory evacuation zone they were in. In response, the company issued an update to other drivers in the state, providing them with the full 75 kWh capacity of their vehicles through September 16th. One driver posted a screenshot of his app, which showed off the new extended range. A Tesla spokesperson confirmed that the company’s 70kWh vehicles also received the update.

As Hurricane Irma bears down on the Florida peninsula this weekend, MIT’s Urban Risk Lab has launched RiskMap.us, an open-source platform that will track flooding in southern Florida. The project is being piloted to provide updates in real time to citizens and emergency planners, and allows for people to submit reports via Twitter, Facebook, or Telegram.

The system uses a chatbot that users can message directly through any of the three social media sites, which sends users a link that will allow them to upload their location, the depth of the water, a description, and a picture, which is then displayed on a map. Users can then share their report on social media.

As Hurricane Irma barrels toward Florida, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is preparing its facilities to withstand the monster storm. Located at Cape Canaveral on Florida’s east coast, KSC is NASA’s biggest spaceport, supporting all of the agency’s past human spaceflight missions and many commercial satellite launches. It’s close to the middle of Irma’s projected path and is expected to experience major high-speed winds this weekend.

Fortunately, KSC is built to handle hurricanes. The large Vehicle Assembly Building, once used to assemble the Space Shuttles prior to launch, is able to withstand winds of 125 miles per hour. After Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992, all new KSC buildings constructed were built to withstand winds between 130 and 135 miles per hour. Irma is now a Category 4 storm, with 150 mph winds, but it’s expected to downgrade by the time it reaches Cape Canaveral.

Hurricane Irma has become the first storm in the world to sustain winds of 185 miles per hour for more than 24 hours. It’s the longest storm to sustain this speed since the 1970s.

The hurricane, which has already devastated several islands in the Caribbean, is headed toward south Florida, where the National Hurricane Center has issued evacuation orders. As of 8AM ET this morning, the maximum sustained speed was 150 miles per hour and the storm is moving west-northwest at about 16 miles per hour, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In anticipation of Hurricane Irma, Florida governor Rick Scott has announced that the state is working with Google’s emergency response team to mark closed roads on Google Maps in real time. This will help with evacuation plans.

Irma is currently a Category 5 hurricane barreling through the Caribbean, and it's expected to impact Florida over the weekend and early next week. Yesterday, officials ordered mandatory evacuations in major parts of Florida, including Miami-Dade County and Fort Lauderdale.

Update September 7th, 10:12AM ET: After launching the X-37B to orbit, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket also stuck another landing at the company’s ground-based landing site at Cape Canaveral, Florida. This marks the 16th successful landing of a Falcon 9 post-launch and the seventh successful landing on solid ground. SpaceX’s live coverage of the mission ended at landing and did not show the deployment of the X-37B, likely due to the fact that its mission is classified.

Original Story: A hurricane barreling toward the Florida coast isn’t stopping SpaceX from launching its Falcon 9 rocket today. The company is slated to launch the US Air Force’s mysterious X-37B spaceplane into orbit sometime this morning or early afternoon from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The timing may work out, since Hurricane Irma isn’t slated to reach Florida until this weekend, but it’s possible weather may delay the mission until after the storm passes.

Right before Hurricane Harvey came barreling down on Texas, residents had a few days to prepare. That's thanks to the sophisticated forecasts of the National Hurricane Center, which is now scrambling to figure out where Hurricane Irma will make landfall in the US. But if the budget cuts that President Donald Trump has requested are implemented, the agencies that give people vital time to get ready for a massive storm will have their budgets slashed — making weather forecasting vulnerable.

The president’s budget proposal calls for a whopping 17 percent cut to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It also calls for trimming 6 percent of the budget for the National Weather Service (NWS), the NOAA agency in charge of providing forecasts for life-threatening weather events like hurricanes. Along with cuts to climate research, satellites, and other weather-related programs, the cuts will put a big strain on the forecasters we’re currently relying on to get ready as Irma grows into a monster storm.

As Hurricane Irma continues toward Florida, people potentially in the storm’s path have been rapidly booking flights and changing existing flights to leave town earlier. As a result of the ticketing surge, airlines’ dynamic pricing models are presenting some customers with flight options that cost thousands of dollars more than usual, leading to accusations of price gouging.

Over the past couple of days, people searching for any remaining flights out of Southern Florida airports have been posting screenshots to Twitter of their highly inflated potential itineraries. One woman using Expedia was shown a Delta itinerary between Miami and Phoenix for $3,258. (Delta later directly reached out to her and she was able to book a seat at a lower price.) Someone else trying to book on American found their flight jumped almost $600 within the span of a couple hours. Another on United’s website was presented with a round trip fare between Miami and Denver for $6,785.

As Texas deals with the fallout from Harvey and the Caribbean braces for the impact of Hurricane Irma, two more hurricanes continue to grow in the Atlantic. The storms are being fueled by warm waters in the Atlantic, which intensifies the hurricanes by providing more energy.

Hurricane Katia is forming in the Gulf of Mexico with winds of 75 miles per hour, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has put out a hurricane warning for the Mexican state of Veracruz. It’s relatively localized, though, and is moving southeast at only 3 miles per hour.

With the Category 5 Hurricane Irma, now one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic, on its way toward the Caribbean and possibly the southeastern tip of the US, a little-known walkie-talkie app has shot to the top of Apple’s App Store. The free app, called Zello Walkie Talkie, lets your phone communicate as a two-way radio so long as you have a network or Wi-Fi connection. What makes it useful is that it allows immediate voice communication to others in a shared channel, as opposed to having to place a phone call and hope someone on the other end picks up. The ad-free service can also be used to send texts and photos.

Zello first began rising in the top free chart as Tropical Storm Harvey made landfall in Texas as a Category 4 hurricane two weeks ago. According to USA Today, the app is the go-to service for rescue workers in the Houston area. Zello CEO Bill Moore told the paper that its service saw 20 times as many new users in Houston last week as rescue efforts ramped up.

By now, almost everyone knows what Harvey and Irma are, but why do hurricanes have names in the first place?

For a simple reason: it makes communication easier. In the past, people identified hurricanes based on latitude and longitude. But a bunch of numbers can be a mouthful and also get confusing when you’re trying to pass information to so many different sources. Names are far more memorable and distinctive, which makes them more convenient to use to get the word out quickly, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Hurricane Irma is the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean outside of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. A Category 5, it is currently heading toward Southern Florida; the Florida Keys announced a mandatory visitor and resident evacuation will begin Wednesday morning. Miami-Dade County’s emergency management Twitter posted a list of evacuation centers today, and Miami’s mayor has said evacuations for the city will begin Wednesday.

Irma is expected to reach Florida by this weekend, and if you could be affected, begin preparing now. If there is an order to evacuate, do not ignore the order. If there is an order to stay at home, sometimes that can be safer than leaving.

Irma is now an “extremely dangerous” Category 5 hurricane with wind speeds up to 185 miles per hour, according to the National Hurricane Center. That makes it the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean outside of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.

It’s still unclear where exactly the hurricane will make landfall in the US and which parts of the East Coast it will affect, but there’s an “increasing chance” that Florida will be impacted later this week and in the weekend, the National Hurricane Center said. The hurricane is expected to affect the Leeward Islands later today and the British and US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico tomorrow.