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.
want to say you re safe from storm surge or things like that, we moved up here for safety and we still have to worry about rainfall and any flooding or anything like that, we re talking 6 to 10 inches of rainfall that they predicted here. it feels like we re not even in the heart of it yet. right, you still have a ways to go, you are going to get 6 to 10 inches of rain, the biggest deal with this storm surge, john, they re expected to get 8 to 13 feet of storm surge in panama city, all the way through the big bend of florida, so, john, this is a serious storm, it s still about 20 to 30 miles from shore, so it should be making landfall within the next couple of hours. 20 to 30 miles from shore. diane, stay safe even as you keep us informed. safety, make sure that s priority one. when we come back, the president just received an update from his team of teams preparing an
apologize in avance. my producer is watching, we have got some stuff that we re afraid might fall. we re in a good position, i m far enough back that it s not going to hit me, but it might mess with some of our equipment. look, there go assign that just popped off of this gate area right here. the trees in some cases are literally bending over right now and so it is just part of this as it begins and comes around here. i know our last set we just did with john, we re in the safest place we can be right now. i can walk just a few feet away from me, and be in a very safe area, which is the best thing to do when you re in a place like this. my question to you, we re on panama city beach, we re on this barrier sort of island area connected by the bridge. will this impact the landfall or the speed of the winds or anything like that on the main land here on the panhandle, on
to come across this area. if you can hear me, diana, please stay with us. i want to bring in jennifer, our meteorologist, as we begin to see diane and we begin to see the conditions worsen behind her, and yet michael has not made landfall yet, help us understand, jennifer, as things get worse, when the worst is still to come where diane is. the worst is yet to come, conditions will deteriorate extremely quickly, the storm is about 50 miles from the coast and it s very important. you see all those trees swaying behind her, most of those trees in the florida panhandle, once you get into georgia, they still have their leaves on them. those trees are going to snap, there s no way these trees are going to with stand 150-mile-per-hour winds. those limbs are going to be projectiles. anybody who has not shuttered
pretty heavily. that s a lot of shore. that s a lot of land. there s going to be storm surge all the way down in tampa which is very low lying and floods easily, but to give you an idea of the breadth of its path, it s very large. it s almost the entire size of the gulf. and they haven t seen that, maybe they haven t seen that at all. nobody s seen that before. the eye diameter is pretty wide, which unfortunately is not good news as it makes landfall. some people may say it s similar to an ef-3 today making landfall in areas that are close to the eye. is there any way that they would struggle to deal with this hurricane. not in this area, irma did not seriously impact the florida panhandle. most of the hit for irma was in the southwest portion of florida and moved up through and created