Hurricane Michael howled closer to Florida's Gulf shore on Tuesday as a major Category 3 storm, with half a million coastal residents strongly urged to seek higher ground on the eve of a landfall forecast to bring towering waves and roof-shredding winds, according to Reuters. Michael is projected to plow into Florida's panhandle at midday on Wednesday, unleashing potentially devastating waves of seawater as high as 13 feet (4 meters) that could rush inland for miles around the storm's center, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned. By Tuesday, Michael was already causing major disruptions to U.S. oil and gas production as it churned north over the Gulf of Mexico. President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency for the entire state of Florida, freeing up federal assistance to supplement state and local disaster response. At latest report, the NHC said the storm was packing sustained winds of up to 120 miles per hour (195 km per hour), jumping from a Category 2 to Category 3 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson wind scale. Winds of that magnitude can inflict substantial damage to roofs and walls of even well-constructed homes, according to the National Weather Service. The storm also is likely to dump prodigious amounts of rain over Florida, Alabama and Georgia, and on the Carolinas which are still reeling from severe flooding last month in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence. Up to a foot of rainfall (30 cm) is forecast for some areas. "This is a storm that is going to be life-threatening in several ways," said Bo Patterson, the mayor of Port St. Joe, Florida, whose small beachfront town lies directly in the storm's projected path. Florida Governor Rick Scott said Michael was expected to be "the most deadly, destructive storm to the panhandle in decades." The region should brace for "major infrastructure damage," specifically to electricity distribution, wastewater treatment systems and transportation networks, Jeff Byard, associate administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), told reporters on a conference call. Byard said an estimated 500,000 people face evacuation orders and advisories in Florida, where residents and tourists were fleeing low-lying areas in at least 20 counties stretching along 200 miles (322 km) of shore in the Panhandle and adjacent Big Bend regions.
