From Newsmax

Hurricane Irma was strengthening ahead of an all-but-certain collision with southern Florida after devastating the Caribbean islands and threatening to become the most expensive storm in U.S. history.

Irma strengthened and made landfall in Cuba on Friday as a Category 5 storm, as millions of Florida residents were ordered to evacuate after the storm killed 21 people in the eastern Caribbean and left catastrophic destruction in its wake.

Irma struck Camaguey Archipelago with 160 mph (260 kph) winds late on Friday, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in an advisory. Category 5 is the NHC’s most powerful designation.

Irma, one of the fiercest Atlantic storms in a century, was expected to hit Florida on Sunday morning, bringing massive damage from wind and flooding to the fourth-largest state by population.

It has already left at least  21 people dead, thousands homeless across the Caribbean and threatens to rack up as much as $200 billion in damages.

“Much of Florida, especially the southern half, is in for a really long and horrible day on Sunday,” said Todd Crawford, lead meteorologist at The Weather Company in Andover, Massachusetts. Another example of “the power of nature on a heavily populated part of the U.S. coastline is imminent, and the costs will be great.”

Mandatory evacuations were issued across Florida, with around 650,000 people fleeing Miami-Dade as part of the largest evacuation the county’s ever attempted. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was evacuated, along with the rest of Palm Beach.

“Prepare for the worst possible,” Trump said Friday as he boarded Marine One, bound for Camp David.

Irma is one of three hurricanes churning in the Atlantic Basin. Jose, the third major one of the 2017 season with top winds of 150 miles per hour, is forecast to turn northeast and miss the U.S. In the Gulf of Mexico, Katia was expected to come ashore in Mexico by early Saturday, delivering a dangerous storm surge. The country was just struck by a powerful earthquake on Friday, shaking buildings in the capital and triggering a tsunami warning.

Irma’s hurricane-force winds now extend for 140 miles, creating a danger zone that would reach from West Palm Beach on the Atlantic coast to Fort Myers on the Gulf of Mexico. That’s an “insurance industry nightmare” as every county in the state could see damaged roofs and power outages so vast it overwhelms repair efforts, said Chuck Watson, a Savannah, Georgia-based disaster modeler with Enki Research.

Damages could easily top $135 billion in Florida, with other economic losses pushing the price tag as high as $200 billion, Watson said. Preliminary estimates show losses across the Caribbean nearing $10 billion. CoreLogic said 8.5 million properties in Florida may be damaged by Irma’s winds.

Total losses from Katrina reached $160 billion in 2017 dollars after it slammed into New Orleans in 2005.

“Wind damage is totally going to throw a wrench into the insurance industry,” Watson said. “You are talking about companies failing.”

About 9 million of Florida’s 20.6 million people may lose power, according to the state’s largest utility Florida Power & Light Co. Irma may also curb natural gas demand in one of the largest U.S. markets and threaten $1.2 billion worth of crops.

Officials were taking steps to ensure adequate supplies of gasoline after residents filled up cars, boats and back-up generators ahead of the storm. “We’re bringing in as much supply of refined fuel as possible,” White House Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert said Friday.

Irma was 315 miles southeast of Miami and is forecast to approach the north coast of Cuba and the central Bahamas before striking southern Florida Sunday morning, the hurricane center said.

The hurricane comes just two weeks after Harvey smashed ashore in Texas, knocking offline almost a quarter of U.S. oil refining capacity and causing widespread power outages and flooding.

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