Video: Hurricane Michael Tears Roof Off Building

The roof of a building was torn off from Hurricane Michael winds on Oct. 10.

The storm had near-Category 5 winds of 155 mph, said the U.S. National Hurricane Center in its most recent update.

Video footage that was also posted on Twitter (below) showed utter devastation in Mexico Beach, Florida. “A whole house is gone and is floating in front of our place,” wrote one person on Instagram.

“A turn toward the northeast is expected this afternoon or tonight. A motion toward the northeast at a faster forward speed is forecast on Thursday through Friday night. On the forecast track, the core of Michael will move inland across the Florida Panhandle this afternoon, and across southeastern Alabama and southwestern Georgia tonight,” said the NHC at 2 p.m. ET.

Michael, which had caught many by surprise with its rapid intensification as it churned north over the Gulf of Mexico, made landfall northwest of the town of Mexico Beach at about 1:40 p.m. EDT as a Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.

The storm could drive seawater levels as high as 14 feet above normal in some areas, the National Hurricane Center said.

Even before Michael made full landfall, it was whipping trees with its winds and had caused flooding in the town of Apalachicola, where more than 5 feet of water was reported, and in Port St. Joe.

“It feels like you don’t know when the next tree is going to fall on top of you because its blowing so ferociously,” said Port St. Joe Mayor Bo Patterson. “You just don’t know when the next one is going down. It’s very, very scary. We have trees being uprooted, heavy, heavy rain.”

Reuters contributed to this report.