tropical storm gordon is gaining strength by the hour. hurricane watches are already in effect for folks in mississippi, all along the alabama coastline as gordon is gathering steam. right now, gordon is lashing south florida and the keys with heavy non-stop rain. powerful winds caused power outages there. governor rick scott reminded people who live there this is the peak of hurricane season and warned folks to be prepared. gordon is expected to make land fall along the gulf coast in the next 36 hours. when it does it is kepted to be at or near hurricane force. let s go to cnn s meteorologist. believe it or not this cluster of storms wasn t even a tropical depression early this morning. it went right to a named tropical storm. i think by tomorrow, sometime
yup. in 1979 when hurricane frederick came along that was the time when it was just beach houses down here. yeah. hurricane frederick destroyed 80% of the buildings on the alabama coastline. and orange beach was change forever. becoming the resort town it is today. down here hurricanes are part of live. as the climate changes things aren t getting better. on the day we visited hurricane nate was on the horizon. one of 17 hurricanes in 2017 alone. right now, this wind and the way the water is this is the sign there is a hurricane headed this direction. yeah, the gulf is only like this when there is a storm coming in. but these people are saying my vacation is today. i planned this months ago. right. i can t lose my vacation day because of hurricanes on the
kid. didn t have all the huge sky scrapers. used to be tiny motels and inns. yup. in 1979 when hurricane frederick came along that was the time when it was just beach houses down here. yeah. hurricane frederick destroyed 80% of the buildings on the alabama coastline. and orange beach was change forever. becoming the resort town it is today. down here hurricanes are part of live. as the climate changes things aren t getting better. on the day we visited hurricane nate was on the horizon. one of 17 hurricanes in 2017 alone. right now, this wind and the way the water is this is the sign there is a hurricane headed this direction. yeah, the gulf is only like this when there is a storm coming in. but these people are saying
ongoing with the weather deteriorating overnight as the center of hurricane nate edges closer and closer to the mississippi/alabama coastline. speaking to the people here and kind of getting a general sense of how people are feeling in beluxy, mississippi. there was no rush to the hardware stores to board up their homes. and is that storm complacency? storm fatigue from the three we had prior to this? it s hard to tell but we don t want to let our guard down just because this is a slightly weaker storm than maria, irma and harvey, doesn t mean it doesn t have its own threats associated with it. storm surge in this area is particularly dangerous because of the shallow nature of the gulf of mexico. it doesn t take much to push up water into the bays, inlets and
local flooding here. rick, what should people across the gulf be prepared for now? so a lot of our models are keeping this kind of a strong tropical storm. a couple of models getting it towards hurricane strength. none of the models making this a major hurricane, which is a very important thing to note. october, still an active time, especially for the gulf and the caribbean. we re going to see rain here. but it s moving so fast, the rainfall totals will be kept down a little bit. probably 4 to 8 inches range. it will cause some flooding. the bigger question is when do we get going once it s back out over the gulf. the gulf is plenty warm at this time. there s likely wind shear to break this thing apart. the two models we rely on most, good agreement here, somewhere around louisiana, maybe over towards mississippi or the alabama coastline. because of that, our cone is actually narrow at this point. a lot of the modelling pretty good agreement. whether we get to the hurricane status