How big is Hurricane Idalia at landfall in Florida? It's as wide as the state of Colorado

Jennifer Sangalang and Jeffrey Meesey, Palm Beach Post
Updated ·2 min read

How big is Hurricane Idalia?

Hurricane Idalia's eye made landfall Wednesday morning at 7:45 a.m. along the coast of Florida's Big Bend near Keaton Beach.

Idalia remained a Category 3 storm with sustained winds at 125 mph on a collision course with Florida's Big Bend, inside 65 miles from the state's capital, Tallahassee.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 49 counties, a broad swath that stretches across the northern half of the state from the Gulf Coast to the Atlantic Coast as catastrophic storm surge is expected.

The National Hurricane Center reported: "Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 25 miles from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 175 miles."

We did the math and broke it down for you:

  • Idalia was about 350 miles across, with the hurricane-force winds about 50 miles in diameter. Idalia covers an area about the size of Colorado, which measures 380 miles wide.

  • At 8 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 30, minutes after landfall in Keaton Beach, Florida, Idalia's tropical-storm force wind field covered an area of about 96,211 square miles. That's a little smaller than the state of Colorado, which measures about 104,000 square miles.

  • At 8 a.m. Wednesday, Idalia's hurricane-force wind field was 1,963 square miles.

How we got the answer:

  • To determine how many miles wide the hurricane is, we multiplied Idalia's "tropical storm-force winds" of 175 miles by two.

  • To determine the area covered by the tropical-storm force wind field, we used the math formula for area of a circle, which is A=Pi(r2) or "area equals Pi (or 3.14) times radius squared."

  • To determine the area covered by the hurricane-force wind field, we used the math formula for area of a circle, which is A=Pi(r2) or "area equals Pi (or 3.14) times radius squared."

Track the path of Hurricane Idalia

Contributing: John Gallas, USA TODAY Network-Florida

Sangalang is a lead digital producer for USA TODAY Network-Florida. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram at @byjensangalang. Support local journalism. Consider subscribing to a Florida newspaper.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Hurricane Idalia size was as wide as Colorado