Click link below picture

.

Extremely dangerous Hurricane Irma first crashed into the Florida Keys on Sunday morning and then made a second landfall on Marco Island on Florida’s west coast Sunday afternoon, unleashing violent wind gusts up to 142 mph and storm-surge flooding. As the powerful storm scoots up Florida’s west coast into this evening, forecasters fear that this storm will go down as one of the worst in the state’s history.

At 10 p.m., the storm was centered 50 miles east-northeast of Fort Myers. Its eyewall – containing the storm’s most violent winds – was about 30 miles west of Sarasota. The storm center was headed north at 14 mph toward the east side of Tampa, where wind gusts of 75 to 100 mph were possible through midnight or 1 a.m. Just before 10 p.m., weather stations in Tampa Bay and Clearwater clocked gusts of 78 mph.

Ocean levels rose quickly in Southwest Florida as the storm center lifted north. In Naples, the storm surge raised water levels 8 feet in two hours, between about 4:30 and 6:30 p.m. before stabilizing by around 8 p.m. But waters were just starting to rise or had yet to begin their rapid rise from Ft. Myers northward.

.

Video from Brickell, Miami shows scenes before and after Hurricane Irma struck. (Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post)

.

.

Click link below for article and videos:

Hurricane Irma battering Florida Peninsula as its … – Washington Post

.

__________________________________________