Repost from down stairs:

How big is Irma? She covers an entire 5º of longitude, >600 miles.

Take Texas, cut off the panhandle and West Texas at the New Mexico line, and she would fill it.

Her central pressure is now 916 mbars, or 27.05 on the barometer (third lowest ever recorded), stronger than all but two storms (Camille and the 1935 Keys storm, which killed 408 people).

Stronger than Katrina, Andrew, Hugo, and Gilbert at their worst.

Underneath that circulation is a 35’ tall bubble of water that she is dragging with her until she hits land.

She’s a screaming, rampaging monster and she’s going to kill a lot of people who can’t, or won’t, get out of her way. Get the fuck out of south Florida now.

I was the Hurricane Coordinator for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s Remediation Division and this is the worst system I’ve ever seen.