By Chris Stanford
The remnants of Hurricane Idalia were dissipating Saturday and pulling away from Bermuda, days after it made landfall along Florida’s Gulf Coast and swept across the Southeast.
On Friday, the storm, which was once a powerful Category 4 hurricane, had weakened to a post-tropical cyclone.
At 5 p.m. Eastern on Saturday, the storm was about 125 miles east of Bermuda, and tropical storm-force winds extended up to 205 miles from its center, the National Hurricane Center said in an advisory.
Idalia had sustained winds of 60 mph, the hurricane center said.
Swells generated by Idalia will affect the southeastern U.S. coast and Bermuda through the weekend, the center said, adding that they would likely cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.
Bermuda, a British territory in the North Atlantic with about 65,000 residents, is nearly 900 miles east of South Carolina.
It has been a busy week in the Atlantic.
Idalia was one of several other storm systems: Tropical Storm Katia, which formed Saturday, was expected to weaken Sunday; Hurricane Franklin, which became an “extratropical” cyclone Friday; Tropical Storm Jose, which was absorbed by Franklin; and Gert, which regenerated into a tropical storm Friday and was expected to be absorbed by Idalia.
Idalia made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 hurricane Wednesday in a sparsely populated area of the Big Bend region, where the state’s peninsula meets the Panhandle.
It was the first major storm to hit Florida this hurricane season. While it swamped fishing villages and beach towns along the coast, the damage did not appear to be as bad as had been feared.
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