eastern gulf of mexico, which is record temperatures, by the way, that s how it s fueling itself to rapidly intensify. but i just want to set the scene here, because what we ve seen is a brick wall on bay shore boulevard, a major artery for tampa, over my right shoulder being completely inundated by waves. any local will tell you this place floods given any rainy day. this is different. this is storm surge inundation, made worse by the fact that the inland flooding is helping make the problem even more challenging. ellison, i did a calculation earlier, googling and fact checking, and we re setting record surge levels in old port tampa, which is very close to us, right about four feet right now, and there s about 1,700 pounds per cubic yard of water. that s a lot of force, and we re setting record surge levels, you can imagine what this means for the six to nine feet of surge up
destructive winds are nearing florida s big bend region as we speak. idalia is about 50 to 60 miles away from the shore churning with 130-mile-per-hour winds. we just got that new forecast from the national hurricane center just moments ago and i want to go straight to derek van dam who is on the ground for us in tampa. s sara sidner is with us as well. derek, you understand what these forecasts mean better than anybody. what does this tell you? reporter: yeah, exactly what we feared, the rapid intensification now to a category 4 major hurricane idalia. and eyeing the big bend coast. but where i m standing now on bay shore boulevard in tampa bay is proof that you do not need to be near the center of where the storm makes landfall in order to feel its impacts. what you are looking at is storm surge from tampa bay.
you run from the water, you hide from the wind. hopefully people have heeded the warnings, as this storm gets closer, and keeps pushing this water onto land, this could end up being an extremely dangerous flooding event. it is already starting to flood, the area where we are, which is normal because we are right near the water. i want to get to tallahassee now, i think where john berman is standing by. john sorry, where derek van dam, we re going to first you know, i have to talk to john, he s my co-anchor. but derek van dam, in tampa, half under water, in a place that s normally dry. what s happening now and where is the storm? reporter: i think people can excuse the technical mishaps we have here, we re in the middle of a dangerous hurricane but we re on bay shore boulevard in tampa bay, just off of tampa bay, the city of tampa, directly
i want to bring in nbc news correspondent marissa parra who is in tampa. good morning, what are you seeing there? reporter: if you were to look over here, it s hard to tell whether i m joining you from the streets of downtown tampa or tampa bay because tampa bay has completely overtaken streets here. if you were to look a little further over here, what you re going to see is a car that tried unsuccessfully to drive through these flooded streets. it was just last night, in fact, maybe even earlier this morning, that we saw cars driving through here. this is bay shore boulevard. this is a pretty normal place, a pretty average place to drive through in downtown. but as you can see, lots of flooding here. this person inside this car needed to be rescued. they tried to drive through an area they shouldn t. authorities kept asking people don t drive through flooded roads. otherwise we ll have to come and rescue. we have heard of several rescues
differing variations of what this storm is doing to the population there, to the buildings, to the water, but everyone is going to feel this in some way, some worse than others. it is by no means over yet just because the storm has made landfall. let me toss it over to derek, he is in the thick of the storm surge there in tampa. reporter: yeah, share ration that s really the nature of hurricanes, right? it s all the water that goes up the nooks and crannies of the shoreline where it has pushed the water into those little areas. we re standing on bay shore boulevard and i think this is notable so i m going to mention it, i ve seen several bystanders, people from the community who have come out to take pictures of this particular flooded thoroughfare, this is a main artery for tampa, which is directly over my right shoulder, why that s significant is because we know that bay shore boulevard floods in a rainstorm, for instance, but this is storm surge and unfortunately we re in low tide