Hurricane Irma shifts away from Miami, taking aim at Tampa
MIAMI -- Hurricane Irma hurtled toward Florida with 125 mph winds Saturday on a new projected track that could put the Tampa area -- not Miami -- in the crosshairs. The Tampa area has not taken a direct hit from a major hurricane in nearly a century. "You need to leave -- not tonight, not in an hour, right now," Gov. Rick Scott warned residents in the evacuation zones ahead of the storm's predicted arrival on Sunday morning. As of 5 p.m. ET, the powerful Category 3 storm was located about 115 miles southeast of Key West. For days, the forecast had made it look as if the Miami metropolitan area of 6 million people on Florida's Atlantic coast could get hit head-on with the catastrophic and long-dreaded Big One. The westward swing in the hurricane's projected path overnight caught many on Florida's Gulf coast off guard. By late morning, few businesses in St. Petersburg and its barrier islands had put plywood or hurricane shutters on their windows, an...
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