KC7NEC wrote:The two "good" things about this storm is its moving through very quickly and its daytime. Likely it will be safe enough and still light that rescues can begin in a few hours.
Not a Official or meteorologist. All opinions and statements are my own. Consult the experts.
If there's any less-than-really-terrible news, it's that Michael has taken one of the "best" paths for minimizing the population in the right hemisphere of the eyewall (where the winds are almost always the strongest). You can pull up Google Earth or look at the satellite data in Google Maps and see that the area east of Panama City is mostly rural with extremely low population density (<10 people per sq. mile in areas). Of course, for those in the way, it doesn't really "help" at all, but, from a human impact perspective, this is a heck of a lot better of an outcome than if the hurricane made landfall 20-30 miles farther west, putting the much-more-populated Panama City area in the right eyewall with onshore winds.
With a ~15 mph motion to the NE, a symmetric wind field would result in winds on the west side of the storm being ~30 mph weaker than on the east side. So, 150-155 mph max near Mexico Beach but ~120-125 mph max near Panama City. Add in the fact that the west side, in this case, had offshore flow (which is almost always meaningfully weaker than onshore flow -- it's way the strongest winds are almost always limited to areas right near the coast), and Panama City dodged a catastrophic bullet. That's of little consolation to those who will come back out to damaged or destroyed houses, but at least there are far fewer of those people than there would have been otherwise.
