Already begun in Southwest Florida. The impacts were not that significant, where the storm has already passed, fdot crews have already driven and cleared more than 2000 miles of roadway in Southwest Florida so weve already started working once the initial initial response is through our cut and tell us crews were transition to Debris Removal. And undergoing are two sentences, leadership, we will stand ready just like with the Dahlia And Debbie to support fiscally constrained counties with the Debris Removal operation please leave dr. Please do not drive on them water over a road can be very dangerous, especially around culverts and bridges. Every storm season, we see people tried to navigate through water. You have no idea whats Going On underneath the water, please do not drive through but were going to stay in touch with our airports and Seaports Sea ports are closed, Water Side right now airports are going to reopen just as soon as practically feasible and thank again, governor. Tha
landfall just to the east or south of where the eye makes landfall. right now it s projected between panama beach and apalachicola. not only is it going to bring ocean water and coastal flooding, there will be wave action on top of that, is the primary driver of the why we evacuate. and on top of that, you have 140-mile-per-hour winds, either structures built before 2001 are not designed to handle that type of wind typically and it s going to unfortunately push through the state. so we re asking citizens in southwest georgia, central georgia to be vigilant and make sure that they understand what s about to come, because this area is going to see a cat 1, cat 2 storm as it moves inland and with the vegetation there, what we re anticipating is a lot of downed trees impacting the area.
of time where you are going to experience the worst of it. it s not going to be over quickly, it s going to last maybe an hour or two hours. so the people that are along that area, that are east of the eye, that could be in the panama city, apalachicola region, and areas to the north. it will slowly get better for you guys, but continue to worsen for people who are in south georgia where they could experience a category 2 by rush hour this afternoon. diane, if you could stay with us as well, and explain the conditions. if we can just split the screen for a minute and see jennifer in the weather center, if you could just show us where michael is now, vis-a-vis panama city, if you will, as we watch diane go through this again, we see the conditions worsening quickly, but michael is still how far away? michael is about 50 miles an
apalachicola is getting about six feet of storm surge, and they re expecting to get 18 feet of storm surge. that s for st. joe, for mexico beach. i ll highlight it for you, it s very hard to see on this radar scope. that s the coast of florida so all of these areas along the coast are expected to get that 8 to 13 feet of storm surge. i understand that we have diane back. diane, can you hear me? uh-huh. are you, has it gotten worse for you? the winds are picking up for you, at this time, i m sure, the storm is about 30 miles from the coast where you are. yeah, and jen, we re starting to experience, the it s the longest sustained period that we have had all day long. like i said before, we were getting the bands of intense winds and we re just not getting the breaks anymore. i m going to go ahead and