Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty Images News / Getty Images
Hurricane Idalia has left hundreds of thousands of people without power after it made landfall Wednesday morning (August 30) along Florida's Gulf Coast. According to PowerOutages.us, 273,104 Floridians don't have electricity in their homes as of 9:50 a.m.
Nearly 43,000 Duke Energy customers lost power after the storm struck the Sunshine State. The outage map also revealed that most of the North Florida region and parts of the Panhandle are suffering the most severe outages.
Tallahassee Mayor John Dailey described Idalia as a "historic hurricane" while he was on NBC News' TODAY.
"This is the largest storm that will ever hit the Big Bend area or the history of the city of Tallahassee," he said. The mayor also had an important message to the people of Tallahassee:
“Stay put, stay inside. As soon as it is safe, first and foremost, we'll check on life and the citizens and make sure everybody is okay. Stay off the roads. We are going to sustain damage, and the roads won’t be safe…Give [the professionals] the chance to get out there and clear the roads, get the power lines up to a safe position before we go out and about.”
Idalia strengthened to a Category 4 hurricane but was downgraded just before landfall. The National Weather Service warned the "extreme dangerous" storm could bring "life-threatening storm surge, hurricane force winds and scattered flash and urban flooding" to these areas.