Hurricane Irma continued to hammer Florida’s coastline on Sunday, after slamming the Keys in the morning and pummeling Miami, Naples and other areas throughout the day.
The storm moved northward near the city of Fort Myers on Sunday evening, according to an update from the National Hurricane Center.
Dangerous storm surges are expected along Florida’s west coast, the NHC said.
As of 8:15 p.m. ET, the eye of the storm was near Fort Myers, but there were reports of trees down as far as Tampa Bay.
The Tampa area has not seen a hurricane in roughly 90 years. Tampa City Mayor Bill Buckhorn told his constituents Tampa was about to be “punched in the mouth” by the storm. The city, like others, instituted a curfew to keep citizens off the streets while emergency and rescue crews do their work.
Irma is one of the most powerful hurricanes to hit the United States in a century. It spent more than eight days as a major hurricane, which is any hurricane rated Category 3 to 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, said Colorado State University meteorologist Philip Klotzbach in a tweet.
It first made landfall in the U.S. as a Category 4 hurricane in the Florida Keys at 9:10 a.m., Sunday morning, then again as a Category 3 at Marco Island in the afternoon. Shortly thereafter, it was downgraded to a Category 2, with wind speeds of 110 mph.
It is expected to remain a hurricane until at least Monday morning, and reach Georgia later Monday.
Almost 150,000 people in Florida were reported to be in shelters, and up to nearly 2 million people were without power in the state.