Hurricane Irma is so powerful that it has temporarily sucked the ocean away from beaches in Florida and the Bahamas in recent days. Manatees were left stranded on the dry sea floor after a rare phenomenon caused by Hurricane Irma that sucked away water from the shoreline in Florida.
On Sunday, the National Weather Service confirmed the phenomenon was also occurring in Naples, Florida. A public information coordinator for Clearwater, Florida, shared videos of the “negative surge” in Tampa Bay.
Several “sea cows” were seen beached in the wake of the hurricane because of the strange phenomenon near Sarasota Bay.
Thankfully after Facebook user Michael Sechler posted the heartbreaking photos of two beached manatees, first responders in Manatee County came to the rescue. One of the citizens who helped save the manatees said the rescuers used a tarp to push the 500 pound mammals into the water.
Angela Fritz, deputy weather editor of The Washington Post, confirmed this phenomenon is real and may occur during extremely powerful hurricanes such as Irma. The storm is so powerful that it can essentially change the shape of the ocean for a time, Fritz wrote.
“Basically, Hurricane Irma is so strong and its pressure is so low, it’s sucking water from its surroundings into the core of the storm,” Fritz wrote.
“In the center of the storm, where there is extreme low pressure, water is drawn upward. Low pressure is basically a sucking mechanism — it sucks the air into it, and when it’s really low, it can change the shape of the surface of the ocean. As the storm draws water toward the center, it gets pulled away from the surroundings.”
Wayne Neely, a forecaster with the Bahamas’ Department of Meteorology, warned residents of Long Island and Exuma, where water had also reportedly receded from the beaches, to be careful as the ocean surged back to high levels.
“Care must be taken in this case because the water often returns with even greater fury,” Neely said in a Facebook post explaining the phenomenon.
Tampa Bay – People can be seen walking on the ocean bed during this unusual phenomenon.
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