UGA Expert on Irma's Impact

Hurricane Irma caused major flooding in Florida and along the Georgia coast. Experts say Savannah and Jacksonville have experienced record-setting floods.
 
Dr. John Knox is a Professor of Geography in UGA’s Atmospheric Sciences Program. He says Irma, which is now a tropical storm, poses dangers for Athens and North Georgia as well.
 
“The winds we’ll experience, we expect winds of 30 to maybe as much as 60 miles an hour in the northern part of Georgia, somewhere maybe in the 50s” according to Knox. “It’s hard to know exactly, these situations evolve quickly. What we expect from that, are downed branches, some downed trees, power lines down.”
 
Knox says you should also stay inside and keep off the roads, even during lulls in the winds.
 
“You need to stay off the roadways because one of the ways people get killed in storms like this is a tree falls on a car and we’ve had that here in the Athens area," said Knox. "We had a father died when a tree fell on his car a few years ago during a windstorm, it wasn’t a tropical windstorm, but it was a wind storm.”
 
He urges everyone in the area to stay out of harm’s way.
 
“I can’t emphasize enough that this afternoon and tonight the best thing to do is stay at home because Irma is a big storm with a large pressure gradient, a large wind field, that means that these winds will go on for hours,” said Knox. 
 
Knox says the winds are from the northeast, which is unusual for our area.