Video footage posted by a person who stayed in Mexico Beach, Florida, during Hurricane Michael revealed total devastation wrought by the storm.
Splintered homes and buildings could be seen floating away in storm surge as the hurricane hit on Oct. 10. Tessa Talarico posted it to her Instagram page and wrote: “A whole house is gone and is floating in front of our place.”
Talarico uploaded footage of the Mexico Beach devastation from another vantage point.
The agency said that the dangerous storm surge continues along the coast of the Florida Panhandle.
“A turn toward the northeast is expected this evening or tonight. A motion toward the northeast at a faster forward speed is forecast on Thursday through Friday night. On the forecast track, the core of Michael will move across southeastern Alabama and southwestern Georgia through this evening,” the agency said in its update.
The storm is weakening and has 125 mph wind gusts, the NHC said. “With the eye of Michael moving inland, residents are reminded to not venture out into the relative calm of the eye, as hazardous winds will increase very quickly as the eye passes,” it stated.
Michael, which had caught many by surprise with its rapid intensification as it churned north over the Gulf of Mexico, was the most powerful storm ever recorded to hit the Panhandle.
It gathered still more strength just before making landfall northwest of the town of Mexico Beach on Wednesday afternoon as a Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale. Its sustained winds were just 2 mph (3.2 kph) shy of being an extremely rare Category 5.
