Florida Officials Forecast Idalia To Become Category 4

The Tampa Bay Times reports:

Tropical Storm Idalia is anticipated to strengthen into a Category 4 hurricane as it enters the Gulf of Mexico, Florida’s emergency chief said on Monday morning as he urged Floridians to prepare for impacts.

“People need to expect, even though they are well off outside of the cone, that we are going to have power outages, we are going to have trees down on power lines,” Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie told reporters in Tallahassee. “You need to be prepared for that.”

As of Monday morning, the storm was 80 miles off the coast of Cozumel and packing 35-miles per hour winds. It will become a hurricane by late Tuesday afternoon.

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