to bring hurricane-force winds from the southern tip of the florida peninsula, all the way through to the florida/georgia border. that s what we re expecting. we know that this westerly trend in the models is so critical. and exactly where the strongest winds will lie. now that we look towards a west coast florida peninsula storm, we focus on naples. we focus on tampa, clearwater and into the coral gables region. but that doesn t mean the east coast is spared. that doesn t mean you health your guard down where you re in miami-dade, we re in south beach. we have seen some of the outer feeder bands from the storm already impact us. it s dry now, but not too far in the distance, we have lightning illuminating the horizon. when we had one of those feeder bands come through later this evening the temperature dropped
we ll see more of the damage it s caused there. and hopefully, it s nothing like we saw across the eastern section of the caribbean. patrick oppmann, again, thank you so much. let s go to meteorologist derek van dam in miami beach. with more on the specific threat from irma and what it poses to the keys. the last time i saw you, it was getting pretty dangerous out there on the beach. the wind really picking up there. what are the conditions like where you are now? reporter: well, they continue to deteriorate, as one would imagine. you know, you describ3ed it really well at the tom of the hour, how each hour, as we stand out in these conditions, the winds become stronger and sustained for longer. we get these feeder bands that come in, the conditions deteriorate in a matter of seconds. right now, we are on the south beach. and if you ve been on the south beach on a saturday morning, you know this beach would be crowded.
we have lots of lightening behind us, there are outer feeder bands that will make their way into the coast line of the miami-dade county. you talk about the track of the storm and we hinge on that westerly shift. this has has some ramifications for places like naples into tampa. it looks like that would have a direct hit with the eye wall which is where you would see the strongest winds from a storm. the other thing about this storm, as well, is with this westerly shift it has a little more time over those warm ocean waters in the florida strait, it allows it to reintense fi. i notice after it grazed the cuba coast, it almost lost some of its structure, kind of a sign with a interaction with the mountainous terrain. but the warm waters over the gulf of mexico and florida strait will allow the storm to
at first it was going westerly. now it s west-northwesterly at 12 miles per hour, and i was really watching that because, unfortunately for cuba, boy, i mean, the torrential downpours and the hurricane force winds have been relentless for cuba. particularly on the north part of the island. now we re getting some of those feeder bands. the very outer feeder bands coming into the keys right now. winds are picking up. current winds as far north assist west palm up to 25 miles per hour. the winds are stronger in key west, and they re going to go up from there. if you are just joining us now, and you haven t most of the computer models have really concentrated this track on the west coast to florida. that means potentially we could see two landfalls with this system. one around the florida keys sometime on sunday morning, and then a second one, sunday into monday, on the west coast of florida. also, even just looking at this now, the first thing i m thinking of, hey, i thought we though
dotting on the edge of it they call the cuba keys there, you can barely see the faint eye. it s not like that beautiful open eye that we could see when it s a cat 5. this eye looks a little shut down but believe me, as soon as it pulls away from that coast of cuba, it will open up and restrengthen a little bit. also, one of the things i want to show you about that satellite picture, look at the white swirls that go all the way around that hurricane. those are the feeder bands when people talk about feeder bands, that s what they re talking about. look at the one that covers south florida and look how far it extends into the atlantic. we re pulling moisture off the atlantic, bringing it across south florida and swirling it back into that hurricane. so we ll have thunderstorms, strong winds, on shore flow, which means there will be some water moving in, particularly at high tide times, all over the east coast. let s talk about the west coast. that s a whole different story. this storm le