Hurricane Idalia continued to build strength over the Gulf of Mexico’s abnormally warm waters on Tuesday, taking aim at a vulnerable but sparsely populated portion of Florida’s coastline known as the Big Bend, where the peninsula curves west into the Panhandle. My colleagues and I on The Times’s Weather desk just redesigned our hurricane tracker with detailed information about the storm’s path and severity. In today’s newsletter, I’m going to tell you how best to track a hurricane’s progress, especially if you’re in its path. But people often misinterpret these maps, thinking they’ll be safe if they live just outside the cone, for example. Nearly a year ago, officials in Florida’s Lee County saw they were on the edge of the cone of uncertainty for Hurricane Ian and delayed an order to evacuate, with devastating consequences.

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Persons: Idalia, they’ll, Hurricane Ian Locations: Bend, Tallahassee, Tampa, Florida’s Lee