Extremely dangerous four. It's more than 400 miles across, pushing a storm surge that officials are calling unsurvivable is now hitting florida's gulf coast as much as 20 feet of water what are forecast along the shore south of tallahassee, which itself is expected to take a direct blow. Some coastal areas already flooding. Take a look live pictures right now from gulfport in tampa on the right interstate to 70 prison biden this evening, urge anyone in the storm's path that take it extremely seriously. A lot of water there is certainly there graham gulfport, especially emergency managers and florida's taylor county are telling people choosing to stay and there are people choosing to stay to write her name and date of birth on a leg to help identify their bodies. Storm warnings are now in effect as far north as charlotte, north carolina. We've got cnn correspondents all along the places now harm's way in chad myers in the cnn weather center, let's start with cnn meteorologist derek van dam, who is an apalachicola. What are you seeing there the conditions as one would expect, have gone down exponentially quick here, an apalachicola near the big bend of florida, we're going to remain on the west side of the eye of the storm. We know that as of course the most powerful, but because of the size of the storm, there's no doubt that we will feel extreme impacts here where we're standing and points further east as well the storm, the bottom is literally dropping out from itself it is strengthening and it is expanding in size as it does. So we were looking at some of the wind radiuses. So how far out the tropical storm force winds extend over 400 miles in amateur the hurricane force winds extend over 100 miles. So it's like having a tornado moved through once the strongest part of the storm comes ashore move through 100 mile wide space. That's the kind of ferocity that this storm is going to come in with. The catastrophic winds that we are anticipating with it. Now, the big bend this catcher's mitt of florida is so vulnerable to the storm surge. So all of that water is going to be pushed up on shore and the worded from the national weather service of unsurvivable storm surge values. Well, that's what 20 feet will do. That is the size of two stories high. In fact, we're on the second can floor of this building here. That would just not be a survivable storm surge. Fortunately for us on the west side, the winds will be coming offshore, so maybe just maybe that will help limit the storm surge potential here. Now, i'm trying to put it into perspective for our viewers, anderson, what it's like to ride out and approaching in category four hurricane that's strengthening and we've get these all too familiar hurricane sounds, almost the roar of a train approaching the area. We get pelted with the strong wind gusts that feels like someone is taking a pressure washer to your face but then of course there's the flickering lights. I cannot believe believe we still have electricity. But in our safe space that we have here and are our airbnb that we rented in apalachicola, we're feeling the brunt of the storm and it's becoming difficult to even open the doors so that just gives you an idea of what people here are going to have to deal with tonight. The flash flood potential his considerable the chance of water sports, waterspouts and tornadoes is real. The storm surge threat is palpable and of course it doesn't just stop at the coast. We know how fast the storm is moving, and that means it's going to bring the hurricane force winds inland at pace overnight. Unfortunately, it's really the sun has set so people have to endure these terrible conditions in the dark of night. Anderson, dark? of checking with you throughout this hour. I want to go a little further south. Cnn's carlos suarez, who's been dodging high waters and joins us now by phone, carlos, where are you and what are you seeing? yeah, anderson. So we are right now in st. Petersburg. We began the day a little bit about 15:20 minutes to the south and the west of cp, we were in gulfport. That is a part of a city in pinellas county that's really is known to flood and we began the day they're having covered two other hurricanes the last couple of years where we knew that that specific neighborhood because it's a lowlying area, was going to flood of a problem that we ran into. Is that around 23, 4:00 this afternoon as that we became unsafe for us to stay there, and so we decided to move a few blocks north where the water hadn't reached just yet, but then our team and meteorologists told us, look at this point because the storm is still to the west of you and it still has to track north. And because of the sheer size of it, you're probably going to get another four feet of snow storm surge. So you really need to get out of there. So we left gulf port and we're going to try to get back over into tampa in hillsborough county because that area is a little bit more inland, although that there's also under a mandatory evacuation, at least some parts along the bay however, all of the bridges at currently connect pinellas county to the tampa area have been closed because of the strong winds and some of the flooding. There's one bridge that takes you south into braiding tin that also closed earlier this afternoon. And so if you're in pinellas county and you didn't evacuate, chances are you're pretty much stuck at home, right? now because you cannot get inland. And so we're in the process right now of trying to find a safe location that we can go live from. But as you've covered many of hurricanes, you know, that's not as easy of a task considering how these storms can change. And more importantly, just the direction of the floods. Carlos suarez, i will check in with you again. The national hurricane center, justin to put out a new bulletin of the the language is sobering for that was going to chad myers and the cnn weather center attempt the first one, what is the latest on this per hour? it did ramp up a little bit over the past couple of hours, but it did not go up between 7:00 and 8:00 p. M. Now, normally, anderson, we get these updates every six hours and a new to track and all that. But when a storm gets very close to hurricane center doesn't every single hour. So here's what we see. Here's what we see, here's what the hurricane hunter just found. So we're now, we're ramped up to 130. That is the bottom end of a category for but it is a major hurricane and it has arms all the way into central florida, going to go all the way with a hurricane warning to macon, georgia it would take three hours from drive to drive there from apalachicola to macon. And that's how long this is going to have hurricane force winds where's it the worst right now? likely from from newport ritchie and around clearwater all the way up to hudson in florida. Anytime you get one of these bands and anderson, you know it well, inbetween the band's the wind kind of dies off when you get one of these heavier bands, the outer bands, then the winds pick up. So i'm thinking probably on land we're probably seeing 70 to 75 miles per hour as the max wind right now but the storm isn't close to shore yet, and it won't get close to shore for another, let's say, three or four hours, the closer it gets, the more winds will go up and likely will have winds around perry perry, florida around 115 miles per hour for august, without a doubt, we are going to see a lot of rainfall. It's already been raining, flash flood warnings are already in effect. Here is the hurricane warning. There's atlanta and make and you can look at a map, how far it is from way down here it's going to be landfalling and that's how long it's going to take. Two cycle down there. We hope he always say, hey, it's going to hit land, it's going to die. This thing is moving so quickly when it hits land, it isn't going to die. It's just going to keep right on going. And that's what's causing a lot of this surge as well. And derek will get surge in apalachicola st. Marks. Absolutely. Cedar key without how would a doubt and all the way along this little hook area through here that's 15 to 20 feet. That's the that's what that's talking about. The unsurvivable city that's why if you're six feet tall and you got to waive or water over you another 14 feet above you you're not going to survive that. So why they're talking like that. And what time is it expected to make actual landfall? and and like, where do you think it will make landfall i think it will make landfall very close to st. Marks. The good news about this area is from about apalachicola and then just points a little bit farther to these all the way down to about hudson. There's just a lot of natural land there kind of manga grove areas and not a lot of beach area. If you go to the beach shadow, i'm sorry. It'll beach they're just going to talk to about these pictures from out of tampa, florida. I mean these are people driving on the highway though the water i mean, it's just pouring over on to that highway. These are incredible images is this live? i don't think so. This is video, this is from earlier. Well, this was still horrible to be doing something like this. They got caught where they thought they were going to get over this bridge or this causeway in time and they did not. That is well, not one not good for your life and certainly not good for your car driving through these are live images also tampa, i'm not sure which all road this on. I'll try to find out, but its eye to on the way to skyway. Yeah. So the water obviously coming over the top of that? no. No cars have it on this now for quite a few hours, it was shut down as soon as the wind got to 60 miles per hour, they said, you're done nobody over the top of that bridge anymore so i'm sorry. I'm sorry. I interrupted helene is expected to break records in some areas, right? oh, without a doubt, there will be more trees and power lines down in tallahassee in valdosta in lake city than they have ever seen before without from thomason. All thomason all the way down even to about savannah, probably more power outages from a gulf landing storm, then an atlantic lane ending storm because the winds and savannah tybee all the way down to jekyll island, your wins off that ocean are going to be at 85. It's a big storm. This is this is tropical storm from south carolina to south of tampa. That's what we're seeing in about two or three hours as this storm continues to move to the north a large area and you're going to have to be very patient. There will be so many millions of power lines down. And customers without power. This is going to take a long time because you can't just put 5,000 crew in one city, you have to try to spread them out. There's so many people are going to be without power, right? chad, we're going to check in dan with you also throughout this hour we're going to coastal while cola the county could get up to 20 feet of storm surge and we'll color ralph thomas is a county commissioner and he joins us now, mr. Thomas, thanks for taking the time. Your county is set to take a direct hit, i think from the storm, what are you experiencing right now? well, we're we're about 60 miles north apalachicola, so we're not seeing being quite as much wind as the reporter earlier. We are seeing an increase in the rivers and the coastal areas. We do have some roads that are underwater already. And so that's that's being breached and that's rising we expect that to continue to rise. What color county off off the coast and the gulf is very shallow compared to a lot of the other golf. And so you can see we're already in the bin, so there's nowhere for that water to go. And now we're pushing it into a shallow area and so definitely the surge is our biggest concern. I mean, residents in your area were warned that the surge could be unsurvivable? that was the word that was used there. There was a countywide mandatory evacuation obviously, nobody is forcing people out of their homes. Do you think most people heeded the evacuation order? most most did. I've never ever seen a countywide evacuation. We frequently will do the coastal areas, but we definitely put out a push to that and i think people he did it better than normal. A lot of folks become complacent and we've all written out storms and said we think we can do that. But this there's not the same storm. This is not anything like we've ever seen. Yeah i mean, that's always the problem is storms changed directions. There can be a slight turn, makes all the difference. And so in the past, people will warn, oh, this is really bad and then they ride it out and then the next time they think, well, i did it last time, so i can do at this time well, we tried to quantify exactly what 20 feet means. If you tell someone as 20 feet high at the beach, they think, well, i'm just not going to go to the beach, but in local the county, the models show us that 20 feet storm surge will push water 2020 miles from the coast and possibly in the south leon and county into, tallahassee to the north. And so that's a big deal that is only 20 miles from the coast absolutely hopefully that does not happen. And hopefully we are spared that. But under the right circumstances, it's not going to be good the gentleman mentioned saint marks. My house is five miles due north of st. Marks. I've never had a drop of water anywhere in my house, but i'm afraid that that may end tonight. As this approaches what are you going to be looking for? like what's top of your list? i mean, you're looking at the storm surge that's number one in the in the big bend region it is mainly first of all, the wind speed when the wind gets up to 35 miles per hour, we're going to shut down all first responders. And so you could have a heart attack, you could have a simple medical need and we can't come get you. We can't do anything that's what we're going to monitor is when we can safely get our people off the roads and then then get them back as quickly as we can. Soon as that wind speed gets back below 35, we're going to have road crews out there. We're going to have chainsaws and equipment. We're going to have our first responders. We're gonna go back and revisit these people that we know for sure did not evacuate. We sent teams out three different times, at least today, knocking door to door, speaking with people face to face, and encouraging them to leave and take him their information and so that will be an initial search and rescue as soon as this clears, we're gonna go back to those folks and hopefully not find a bad situation. We're showing some pictures of first responders in the county jazzing ready. So you have folks are ready to go. Obviously, they can't go out and some conditions, but as soon as conditions allow, they're going to go out and it seems like you've got to good amount of people there absolutely. That's that's the true heroes in this story because they sent their families away, their family had evacuated and they're behind and to take care of the county and the folks that didn't evacuated. And so they're dedicated. We even had to relocate to of our fire stations that are in the search zone. So two of those coastal stations have no one in them tonight because they were at risk there mainly in the main station yeah. Well, commissioner thompson wish you the best and we'll talk to you later. Thank you. Thank you, sir. God bless you. Seen as michael yoshida is in steen hatchie. What do you seeing there? michael there anderson at this one, you can see the wind, the rain really starting to pick up over the last hour right here along the steen hatchie river, put in perspective for you, were in that big bend area of florida, you can see maybe those lights in the distance just past there is where the river leads in to the bay and then the golf and that's why for this community in the entire county, there was that mandatory evacuation because of the storm surge concern? the owner of this marina to put it in perspective for you telling me earlier today when those waters have risen previously during storms, floating docks like the one you see right here, have risen up above the top of those posts right there. And then floated off. That's why you see in their prep this time, they tied them together to some of the other ones that are more anchored down but just another visual, how dangerous this storm potentially could be, obviously, as they start to rise, we're about to make our way to the higher ground areas, but officials have been urging people to take their preparation crc to evacuate if they could a sobering messaged earlier today from the sheriff's office, the emergency managers, saying that if you decided to hunker down found to try and ride out this storm, they wanted you to take that permanent marker, write your name, your date of birth, other identifying information on you just in case obviously, this dangerous storm took a deadly turn so a lot of concern here in steen hatchie has the storm moves it's closer. All right. Like she'd a thank you. Michael bobbitt lives on cedar key, which is small island surrounded by the gulf of mexico he has chosen not to leave michael. Thanks for joining us. First of all, what are what's it like? what are you seeing out of your window? there? like right now? it's not good, it's just in the last hour really things have started to come apart. The gulf is rising up to swallow the island. During hurricane dahlia a year ago, we got about seven foot of storm surge and it completely devastated the island. We're looking at between 12 and possibly 20 feet of storm surge luckily, i'm in a house at the top of a tall hill. I think i'll be okay. But i don't know that cedar key as we know, it will exist in the morning. You've you've written out storage before. I assume that's why you're doing it now, even though this is worse as you said, then the last one with the storm surge, i know multiple neighbors first of years also have chosen to ride out the storm. Why did you decide to stay well, that's exactly why why i'm here. I know of at least a half dozen, maybe ten elderly people that just refused to leave there in lowlying houses. They don't believe the water is going to come up as high as it's going to come. And at some point, they're either going to drop brown in that house or someone's going to have to go and get them and emergency services after the wind gets about 35 miles an hour, or they can't go out but i can i have a rescue boat stationed outside. Outside my yard. I've got tactical gear. I've got a little team here. The minute that it's safe enough to get out there, we're going to go start trying to pull people off roofs and hopefully, hopefully their live people and not bodies. I stayed to help my island as best i could do you have any sense of when emergency services could be available once this thing passes? i think it's going to be a long time. I think it's going to be ours. And i know that we have a really brave volunteer fire department here. You're on the island. Really remarkable professionals that give other time and energy and put themselves in harm's way but there's a limited amount of resources and i have every reason to believe the bridges will be completely inundated and cedar key is a little island, three miles out into the gulf of mexico were completely isolated and exposed. I think it will be days and days before anyone from the outside can get here. So we're on our own. And i was unwilling to leave my neighbors without any help. How many do you have a rough estimate? how many people actually live in cedar key? i mean, the no way to know how many stay, but i'm wondering just in general sure. There are about 750 of us that live here year round. Those numbers get bigger on the weekends for folks who come for the weekend and leave. But about 750 of us and in talking with the local authorities, i think about 50 people stayed behind and of those 50, i think about can are really unable to take care of themselves well, michael, i appreciate you talking to us and awesome. You got to a boat available in some folks that have kind of banded together, michael bobbitt, we'll check in with you. Thank you. I want to go to the state capitol also right now, joining us now is tallahassee city manager reese good as you go, can you just walk us through what it's like? there are now what are you seeing you know, anderson, it's relatively calm. The winds are picking up has been rainy, breezy day, and honestly, we're anxiously waiting the storm. We've been prepared for days. We can see it coming. It's going to be here soon, but we're waiting on it and conditions are starting to worsen the national weather service described the storm surge as potentially unsurvivable in the region. What do you have to say to resonance tallahassee and the surrounding areas who have decided to ride out the storm you know, anderson, we're about 25 miles north of st. Marks, the coast, the gulf coast. And so storm surge surge is not a concern for us, right? but we are very treat community. We've got 55% of our land mass is covered by trees. And so that's a threat and we've been communicating with our community and i'll be honest with you. People have taken heed, they've taken safe shelter. The roads have been very calm today people are in our shelters that need to be in the shelters. I think people are prepared, they heeded the warning and we're bracing for impact resources are available to those who've stayed in the area we have shelters, we've got about 1,400 people in our shelters as we speak, there, eight shelters throughout our county or leon county, which is where tallahassee is they have a good opportunity for shelter you got a backup 911 center just in case people need those resources, we do expect will probably have to do rescues overnight. Our fire department is more than prepared to do that and so we stand ready to tackle the challenge in terms of the history of storms or tallahassee has seen do you know how give a sense of this compares you know, unfortunately we've seen too many this is, i believe our six storm in about the last eight years, including the tornadoes that impacted us in may this will, if it stays that has projected it seems it will this will be the worst we've seen. The winds will be the highest for the longest duration, the widest spread and so we understand that we don't have a comparable, we are very prepared. I will tell you but we're not sure exactly what this brings. We know it will be worse than we've seen before. No risa, i wish you the best and we'll we'll be in touch. Thank you thank you. Got to take a quick break more on helene now, category four hurricane, when we come back he's brought to you by megalopolis only in theaters friday city that people can dream about this tobias i still so much to recover what your time. Megalopolis, radar, this tiny home trend not for me. Now, this is more like it the same goes for my foot worth. Why went handsfree with white fits, get your slippers just step in and go without bending down or touching my shoes i bet hands free sketches, slip is welcome to the now way to network. They switch to junipers ai native network, so they can take their game to a whole new level. 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Please write your name, birthday, and important information on your arm or leg in a permanent marker or so that you can be identified and family notified. That is how concerned some more tonight, joining us now on the phone is taylor county's director of emergency management, john louk john, we mentioned that facebook post from the taylor county sheriff's office has the county ever issued guidance like that during a previous hurricane will actually we did during hurricane dahlia of course, that time we weren't looking at a storm surge like we are now and what everybody needs to remember. This is said to be an unprecedented event for this county where the storm surge from 15 to 20 feet, which is catastrophic and definitely lifethreatening. And having people that are not used to dealing with something like this. We just need to ensure that in unlikely event that fatalities happen, that we can do the job that we need to do when we begin, are us are operations. What right now concerns you the most tonight? well, i guess simply the fact that we are constantly learning week. We sent out information on social media for folks to send us an email if they are not evacuating, to let us know where they're at how many people are in the home, that sort of information? and we are constantly getting emails from people, even and even now, just so close to landfall and it's just, it's very, disconcerting that so many people who have not heeded the warnings, do you have a sense right now of how many you've heard from and how many people do you think have our staying behind or writing it out? just for documentation purposes, we are looking at between three and 400 people. And that's why i'm sorry. I just got the word that is way higher than that so it's that's not even obviously the people that took the time to report to us. So yes, it's a disheartening so based on what you've seen so far tonight and phil obviously a lot can happen between now and landfall. What what are you expecting a recovery cleanup operations to look like in the morning? well, it appears like it's going to be a lot like idalia's obviously, we're going to have where a large force areas so we're definitely looking at a large number of trees being down obviously a large power outage because of the trees falling, power lines and just the cleanup alone is going to take quite some time and of course, our first our first mission is going to get out with our cut crews and tossed teams, get the roads clear first responders can make their way to people and begin our search and rescue operations. John, i appreciate you taking time to talk to us and keep folks updated. John lausch. Thank you. I wish you the best. It's like, sir, i want to get the latest tracking on storm now from jamie rhome, deputy director of the national hurricane center and so jamie, what can we expect from this once it makes landfall man, i was just listening to your previous yes. That's that was heartbreaking. You can almost hear the exasperations in his voice talking about these people that wouldn't leave far worstcase scenario materializes and it looks like it will for certain parts of the big bend here we're looking at over 15 feet of storm surge it's just not going to be pretty when the sun comes up tomorrow so the 15 feet of storm surge, i mean just for folks who have not written out a storm like this, have not seen what that actually looks like what, what does that look like? what does that mean well, i'm six feet tall, so that's more than two of me. To give it give you some perspective. Typical ceiling and homes about 12 feet. So unless people live on a twostory home, they can't escape it vertically physically run out of room. And if they tried to leave their home and those conditions, it the water is not just coming up gently, it's coming up with great force, huge waves on them. There's debris in the water. It's just not a survivable situation. So i hope that those people that three to 400 people, that the gentleman was talking about did leave lastminute. Chad myers from the weather center. I knew i had some questions for you as well. Chad jamie, we had a predecessor rain event and for those who are the millions of those who don't know what that means it has been raining for 24 hours or more in a place that is going to see a very sick wind event describe what a pre is and what these people here, the millions more that are in the way of this wind can expect yes pre is just a technical term for preexisting sort of setup, preexisting feature. So it is almost like a cold front if you will, up in here, all of this tropical moisture sort of running up into that cold front it's already wet ahead of the storm. So usually what happens with these storms is you get all of the heavy rain falling flash, flooding with the actual center of circulation i'm going to turn on the current flood warnings. So these green little area he's here to note the current flood warnings were flooding is already occurring. Look, how far ahead of the storm the storm hasn't even gotten their way down here in it's already this huge flooding event taking shape hours before the storm this is probably going to be a historic inland flooding event to, in historically speaking, historically speaking, 50% of the lives lost are in setups like this. So once the storm makes landfall, expected to make its way north into georgia for people in the storms anticipated path, what should they be doing right now you gotta be ready to go for long periods of time without power. This part of the country has a really dense, beautiful tree canopy. Those trees sort of are like sales. If you will, they catch the wind and they come down really easily. And then with all this rain, especially this preexisting rain that makes the roots sort of softens the soil in the roots of the trees can't hold as well as they would normally. So we're just going to have widespread tree, tree out at trees down and and power outages who people have got to be ready to take care of themselves, take care of themselves for several days without power. Jed, i think given other jimmie, i think people maybe years ago kind of had this hurts kane fatigue. We haven't had the number of hurricanes that we were anticipating at this doesn't mean we're not going to catch up. But this is going to be, this could be the biggest storm of the year, and people don't seem to be taking it seriously hearing information that's coming in here that would suggest that people aren't, and you see the footage people just out and about walking in these conditions yet, somehow we got to get people to realize that these aren't just an interesting phenomenon. They're very, very deadly, especially with this setup that we talked about with his preexisting rainfall. We're proud probably going to lose a lot of lives in this setup with this much flooding potential jamie rome, appreciate your time. Thank you. Carlos suarez is in st. Petersburg on the water. Carlos, we're talking about where you're at right now, what you're seeing that's right. Anderson. We are in a st petersburg after trying down unsuccessfully to get out back into tampa because of some of the flooding concerns that are taking place right now. Here in the st. Pete, as well as clearwater and down in gulfport we're at a marina where you can see behind me a part of the year out here the seawall was damaged by the rising tide and all of the storm surge associated with this, you can see where this part of the pier here just broke off and it's pushed up against this long seawall here up and drive up and down this portion of st. Pete really shows that much of this neighborhood is in the dark. There is a good amount of debris and we're still seeing all of this storm water, the storm surge push into off of the gulf as well as from tampa bay you know, kind of going into today, we knew that where we were in gulfport was going to flood because we've covered two other hurricanes and that's where we had prepositioned. But going into the afternoon today, we really knew it was going to be particularly more dire situation because all of that water just started to rush. And when you look at the radar, the storm at that time was still to the southwest of us. Of course now it's continued on that track north even with the storm staying off about 100 miles to the west of unelis county where we are right now. You could still feel all of that. The wind. You could still feel all of that rain that fell over the past couple of hours. And more importantly, you started to see that storm surge and this right now really is not the worst of it because even though the storm has slowly continued its way north, a high tide is not going to be here until about 12 or 1:00 in the morning. You're still going to have all of that water being pushed in, even though the storm is far north of where we are right now. But anderson, that's kind of the situation here in st. Pete we were about 20 minutes to the south and the west of here where things just were too dangerous for us to be. So we drove around, we found this one area, and then we just came across this damaged pier here and it's it's pretty dark out here because the neighborhood is lost power, but up and down this marina here, it's just littered with debris and buoys and trash at this point, you can understand the you can get a better grasp of the situation when folks wake up tomorrow and the cleanup effort gets underway here in st. Petersburg, carlos suarez, thanks very much. I was one of the things karla said it's just important to point out storm surge coming in if it's a 15 foot storm surge coming in at midnight or 1:00 a. M. In the morning into your house, the lights are already off. That is a very scary situation for a lot of people who are staying behind. Conditions appear to be worsening in apalachicola will take you back there live also will talk to the superintendent tallahassee schools some which as you've heard, are now being used as shelters from the now carry gory four storm. We'll be right back tim walz and j. D. Vance in their first and only facetoface debate. And cnn it hasn't covered with the best political team in the business a cnn special event, but vice presidential debate, tuesday at nine on cnn, type two diabetes, discover the ozempic tries i got the a1c cv risk and lost some weight in studies, the majority of people reached an a1c under seven and maintained it. 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Com only shows you homes for sale stores directly from professionals. Meaning you can trust every home listing is a real lifting. Don't all abs do that? get 15% off now at very very. Com to 30 years have been saying publicly, more people turns out, i have enough money. I could just shut up, but you october 5th on cnn so we've just gotten some early storm surge numbers from the cnn weather center, tampa bay fiveandahalf feet st. Petersburg, five feet. The larger numbers though, are yet to come farther up the coast from the national hurricane center is forced gas forecasting as much as 20 feet of water. Some areas cnn's derek van dam is in apalachicola. How are things there? so apalachicola adamson has just passed low tide and we have had 3. 6 feet of reported at that low tide value. And a buoy on the west side eye wall of a major hurricane helene. So still out in the gulf mexico, about 100 miles away, registered wave heights at 25. So we anticipate as the tide levels, a high tide approaches, and as the brunt of the storm approaches surge is going to come it fast and it's going to come in furious as well. Conditions there have deteriorated so quickly we, as you would expect, with an incoming major category four hurricane, but when we talk about the immediate threats to this area aside from storm surge, it is the potential for catastrophic winds. There is a extreme wind warning that the national weather service, it really reserves for the most extreme stream moments during a hurricane events. They have issued one just yet, but i do anticipate that to occur probably along the coastline of the big bend just to my east taylor county, perhaps an tallahassee as well. This is reserved for those moments where winds are so extreme that it is time to shelter in place. We will be on the western side of this storm. But because of its size, we know that the impacts will be felt well away from here and you know, what can 100 mile per hour winds do well, it can peel back roofs of houses it can collapse buildings. It can snap power poles in half, and it can topple trees like a moment's. Notice. And speaking of trees, that is one of the big concerns in this area because the big bend, the natural causes coastline of florida all the way to tallahassee. They pride themselves on their oak trees, the pine trees that didn't line this area they're going to be no stand against a hurricane of this force of this magnitude. And they will come down and they will take power down with it. It is a mirror recall that here in apalachicola the power hasn't even flickered yet, but i expect that to change as we get the brunt of the worst part of the storm's impacts here in apalachicola. As we approached the evening pass apm and into excuse me, approaching midnight i doubt or i should say anderson this storm. We know it means business. It's tightening and its core, its center. And that's the indicator to the meteorology just that the storm continues to strengthen balloon in size, the impacts will be felt well inland from here, derek van dam. Thanks to be careful. I want to go to cnn's john berman in tallahassee, john howard, thanks conditions deteriorating. I know what that feels like and are sitting here in tallahassee i see the winds are picking up their measure gusts now, somewhere around 30 plus miles an hour, maybe a little stronger now. So getting closer and closer to tropical storm force winds, some of the hardest rain that we've had yet kind of the spoliated rain, the tears at your face as we've been talking about all night tallahassee has not been hit in record afforded history with sustained hurricane force winds. That is what is expected tonight. Maybe a direct hit on tallahassee in fact, the storm will make landfall some 20 miles south of here, maybe around st. Marks and the big bend area as a category four storm winds of 120, 530 miles per hour but up here over tallahassee, it could still be 110 miles an hour and they've just never seen anything like that. A city official told me a short time ago, they expect thousands of trees, thousands, and thousands of trees to come down. The beautiful live oaks here. And that will just cause major problems. Hundreds of road closures expected mccain like a few years ago, which wasn't a direct hit on tallahassee at all, cause power outage for 90% of the population here for a week. So a direct hit on tallahassee, it could be much worse than that. They've got power crews stage already again, that wind is really starting to pick up in the rain coming down, down here. But the power crews are staged, ready to work on repairs tomorrow morning. The worst of the storm still a few hours away from tallahassee, but really bracing for a direct hit, the likes of which anderson, they just have never seen before john berman. Thank you will check in with you again, joining us is the superintendent of leon county schools rocky hannah superintendent. What's the situation now in the school shelters? obviously, the schools are closed, will be tomorrow, i assume been turned into shelters. How many people? would you estimate are now seeking shelter in schools yeah. Anderson, we're just all collectively holding our breath from cedar key to apalachicola i've lived here my entire life and to your earlier comments that were made in mid 1980s, we had a small category one hurricane kate they came through tallahassee and leon county it devastated this community has mentioned before, we love our trees or power lines or aboveground it took weeks and really months for us to just recover from that storm on wednesday, our students went to school for a halfday. We quickly turned our schools or public schools into emergency shelters. We are operating eight emergency shelters and the two shelters for leon county schools and employees it's the duty and responsibility we have as a public school system. Lot of people don't realize that is to shelter people from harm their homes many times can cannot withstand these high force winds. About building codes are public schools can withstand hurricane can you force winds and we don't have a lot of trees around our schools. And at times like this, it's when leaders step up and lead. And i'm just so thankful to our school principals and administrators, our teachers or noninstruction al personnel that has stepped up and left their families to man these facilities as it seemed, manager good mentioned earlier where now over 2000 residents, the votes from leon county and surrounding counties like taylor and wakala, jefferson, madison and we're just hunker down and wait. The sun's going to come out tomorrow morning and will evaluate the damage and then see what steps we take next but property can be replaced. Anderson people cannot yeah. Hard to be ready for this moment. We are in unison with our city government or a county government emergency management officials. And i'm really proud and honored to serve as superintendent i've been with our district my entire career and product of our public schools, tallahassee is a great place to live, but let's face it. It's floor for time to time, things like this happen. This is like a dahlia, but i on steroids superintendent rocky hanna. Thank you so much and good luck to you coming up next. The mayor of one of the florida cities expecting to see record water levels when we come back morning, here are the five things you need to know to start your day, get the news, you need how about this for an earnings call headline? in five minutes or less cnn's five things with kate bolduan streaming weekdays on cnn. Com, and max. I have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. Thanks to sky rosie, i'm on my way with clearer skin. 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Call now to see if you qualify to get a clear captions phone at no cost to you, call 18059 to 1334 that's 18059 to 1334 if anyone knows, halloween is all about black and michael's house. All the record we may about black buggy the farmer's dog, who'd lost so much weight. Prerecorded russian impacts, makes it really easy to keep them lean and healthy in the morning, he flies up the stairs and ops obama bed. In the past, he would not have been able to do any of those things when spills, heartburn, how do you spell relief or laits rolaids, dual active formula begins to neutralize acid on contact rolake spells relief i'm alayna treene traveling with the trump campaign. And getting some more storm numbers from the weather center, clearwater beach has now seen five feet of water. I'm joined by the mayor here of clearwater, bruce rector they are what are conditions like right now? well, as you just said, we've got a storm surge of five feet. Here was recently measured, and then that's exceeding the seawall by three feet. So also going to report just recently that are famous pier 60 on clearwater beach. That the water is up to the piers. So it's it's it's very serious that'll clearwater beach right now. I know the storm is expected to bring record water levels to clearwater. What is the record that exists right now, do you know? you go way way back to, you know, the 1920s when we've been fortunate in tampa bay do not have a major hurricane for a long time. So i'm sure nothing today would exceed that, but this is definitely in larger than in recent history. I got to call just a minute ago from somebody who's been here in clearwater for well over ten years and they they chose to stay out on the beach and water is threatening their homes. So they stayed because they just never have seen this kind of water come onto the beach. So what do you say to somebody at that stage? i mean, it's too late to leave now, right? to light to leave now you stayed side, you get a pi as high as you can. You protect yourself and but for folks out there that are stranded, if they let us know, then as soon as our first responders can get out there to check on them, they will do that. We have to wait for to sustain wins to drop down to make sure our first responders were safe. But they're there are a lot of people in clearwater who are anxious right now. Some of the lost power. So it's dark. They've had one voter threatening their homes like they've never seen a threatened before and it's a very scary time for a lot of folks hear right now, you have about five feet record and terms of storm surge, what are you expecting? what do you anticipating? the highest to be but the forecast was update feet and we've still got upwards of two or three more hours to go high tide here is a little after 11:00 tonight. So we we couldn't get up to a foot forecast number and what kind of an impact would that have lot of homes. Our main priority is live human life. We want to make sure that everyone is safe. We don't want anyone to get hurt so as long as people are smart, they stay in their homes and they stay up. They've, they've said comb and protected against intrusion into electrical devices and things, then then they should be able to get through it but they need to be smart and not out of their homes. And get to a high place within there. Own. My record, i know it's gonna be a long night for you. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. Anderson, want to check back in with cnn meteorologist chad myers has some new and concerning wind speed numbers. Chad. Yeah we know now that the hurricane center is putting out the new update every hour, not every six hour, not every three hours, but every single hour. And the number is now 100 140 miles per hour category 41 hundred and 40. And how they figure that out is that there is a lockheed ryan airplane through this and it found a wind gust at 7,000 feet. But it found a gusts at 160 miles per hour. Now that's not surface, that's aloft, so you have to reduce that by a little bit. But because of actually the reduction itself they've got to 140 for the maximum sustained winds for this storm right now still intensifying. And these are always the worst as they continue to intensify, as they get closer and closer to land. Anderson, just in terms of when landfall we're talking about this in our earlier in the hour, but let's just give an update in the last day in a minute and a half that we have. When is expected to make landfall on where the worst part of the eye wall is probably three hours away that we always call landfall the center of the eye but by the time the center of the eye comes by half of the damage has already been done. So the center of the eyes still about 70 or so miles away, but the eyewall itself is getting closer and closer, probably within two hours for at least the northern part, the extension of the northern part of the eyewall is a couple of hours out and you expect it still. I mean, it's tracking for the northern part of florida northwest. It has not moved. It has not budged at all. It just has not budged. This is because when it started to move quickly and swimming 2025 miles per hour, when it does that. Now, all of a sudden it has moment momentum, it doesn't wobble anymore. It's not doing two or three backandforth. It has its eye on the arm right here, bend of florida as it comes right down by, is probably very, very close to st. Marks. And i hope there's no one left in st. Marks right now because i've been in that town in ivan and there was a dozen feet of surge and it was really bad. And we're going to get 20 feet of surge. That's going