Here's how big Hurricane Irma is compared to Tennessee
Hurricane Irma continues on its path toward South Florida as the Category 5 storm rolls through the Caribbean this week, killing at least 10 people so far with its 180-mile per hour winds.
The storm is expected to make landfall along the Florida coast — possibly in Miami Beach, where a mandatory evacuation has been ordered — on Sunday, though rain and wind from Irma will reach the area beforehand.
Governors in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina declared states of emergency this week in preparation for Hurricane Irma and the potential catastrophic damage it could bring to parts of the Southeast.
As of Thursday morning, the National Hurricane Center reported that Eastern Tennessee is expected to next week experience tropical storm-force winds of up to 30 miles per hour as the outer edge of Irma moves up the East Coast.
How does Irma’s size compare to Tennessee?
Though the National Hurricane Center hasn’t released a report giving the exact size of Irma, after running some calculations, meteorologist John Cohen at the National Weather Service in Nashville came up with an estimate: 240 miles.
That diameter includes both the tropical storm-force winds of at least 50 miles per hour, as well as a roughly 50-mile circle with hurricane-force winds, Cohen said.
Its eye is an estimated 25 to 30 miles in diameter.
If Irma were to be directly over Tennessee, the current-sized storm would span the length equivalent the distance from Memphis to Murfreesboro.
If that were the case, within that area, Cohen said, Tennessee would experience "a 50-mile swath, moving in whatever direction, of severe weather," noting that hurricane force winds would be 74 miles per hour or greater in that inner circle.
The storm's eye would span roughly the area equivalent of Jackson to Wildersville.
The Volunteer State being 120 miles tall, Irma's diameter would encompass double the height of the state.
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