this is the part that we re going to be watching as we go throughout, especially i d say in the next two to three hours as it heads northward. let s get the latest measurement on this to see how far away we are. this is the atlantic beach area. then down to the eye. you know, right now it s about 26 miles. so this as the storm pushes up along the coast is going to brush this area here. so we ll see how that all plays out. but that s what we re watching. because that s where the highest winds are. here s a different view of it on the radar. i have some of the stations that have the automatic wind readings on it. 57, a pair of them. quite the day, you started off with tornados, that big tornado. a lot of significant damage. now you ve got a hurricane right next door. cape lookout starting to increase. winds not so bad in wilmington anymore. they re on the back side of the storm and heading out. high tide cycle is ongoing right now. looking at the storm gauge down here in the beaufort are
the rain has stopped in many areas like myrtle beach to georgetown. still tropical storm gusts. that s why they re telling people to stay home. they have to clean up blanches that came down. morehead city starting to pick up. we showed you the potential of tornadoes. one tornado warning north of the sound areas. you can see the bands continue to spiral in here. these tornado watches go until 7:00 a.m. in the morning. now let s track the eye for you. we re getting close enough that we can do this. here is morehead city. this is where the cedar island ferry drives out to oak coke island. as we track the distance here, because this is there we go. let s do this again. this is the beach area. that s the northern eye. we got 31 miles from atlantic beach down to that northern eye.
island, that s atlantic beach. to the right is beaufort area. this is cape lookout. this is cape lookout national seashore. this is the cedar island ferry there up to the north. and the thing that we re watching is this is kind of you see a little spin. that s the center of the storm. that has to go over land for it to be called a landfall. just because we have the eye over land doesn t mean that that s what we re dealing with. doesn t mean we get an official lawful. we may have to wait until the outer banks. regardless, the strongest winds are with this northern band. you can see the arc on. it s only about half a semicircle, but the northern part is over land right now. so obviously, if we re going to have any really high wind gust, this is where it s going to be occurring in the next hour or two. as far as impacts go, storm surge, we got past the high tide cycle. most of the areas are going to be two to three feet. that s all we ve reenly seen with this storm. i m not too concerne
this is where the highest winds would be, and this is what we ll be watching to see if that moves on shore. the center of the storm is located down here. that s right in this area here. and so we re going to have to wait and see exactly what distance or how that plays itself up. this path may be along the coast. we re not sure we ll get official lachkd ondfall or not,. we ll be watching that in the next two hours as we go along. 3:00 a.m. is when we estimate we get the eye moving on shore. we ve been talking about it all week. how much longer will we be talking about it? this storm will be moving past hatteras by 10:00, 11:00 p.m. the backside will take another two hours. by 1:00 p.m. it will be gone from north carolina. later this hour we have tropical storm warnings in cape cod, and our friends in nova scotia have the possibility of getting hit by this as a hurricane saturday.
it has really been an active day with tornadic activity, much more so than we ve seen in most of the storms that we ve had in this area. and we ve been under a watch or warning off and on all day long. we do have two confirmed tornadoes within onslow county. one was in the sneeds ferry area, and one near belgrade road. there have been multiple tornadoes in the jurisdictions around our country. do you have reports on what kind of damage they might have done? we have not yet confirmed damage in the county. we will be sending out crews as soon as the most damaging winds pass so that they can begin to assess damage. we do not believe we have significant damage from the tornadoes within onslow county due to the location. one was fortunately in a more would th wooded area.