saluting the class of 2022 from the president to the fonz. announcer: this is nbc nightly news with lester holt good evening. i m tom llamas in for lester tonight, a dangerous tropical threat taking aim at florida, parts of the southern coast getting pounded by heavy rains. the tropical cyclone with warnings issued for a large part of the state, including south florida and the keys also on alert, parts of the bahamas and cuba where at leas one person already died dangerous rains expected to continue overnight, causing torrential downpours and possible tornadoes. just this week the national weather service predicting an above average hurricane season we start tonight with meteorologist bill karins tracking this dangerous storm. bill, what are you seeing reporter: tom, i m very concerned with heavy rainfall overwhelming flood control systems in south florida. they re thinking the possibility for water into homes, evacuations and rescues in the next 24 hours. let me give
saluting the class of 2022 from the president to the fonz. announcer: this is nbc nightly news with lester holt good evening. i m tom llamas in for lester tonight, a dangerous tropical threat taking aim at florida, parts of the southern coast getting pounded by heavy rains. the tropical cyclone with warnings issued for a large part of the state, including south florida and the keys also on alert, parts of the bahamas and cuba where at leas one person already died dangerous rains expected to continue overnight, causing torrential downpours and possible tornadoes. just this week the national weather service predicting an above average hurricane season we start tonight with meteorologist bill karins tracking this dangerous storm. bill, what are you seeing reporter: tom, i m very concerned with heavy rainfall overwhelming flood control systems in south florida. they re thinking the possibility for
there. now with social media, frankly, twitter came around in 2006 and revolutionized how response agencies gather information. this all happened on the 16th anniversary of katrina which still haunts all of us here in the u.s. was ida a test of the improvements that were made since katrina and based on what we re seeing right now, does it give you confidence that our infrastructure is in a much better place? it was a best, but then again, fema and response agencies have been tested basically every year since 2005. there s been devastating hurricanes and wildfires, tornadoes, floods, you name it over the past 16 years that have tested the response agencies over and over again, specifically with regard to new orleans, it tested the flood control systems and seems to have met the test.
aimed think there might be some isolated areas, 15 feet as it makes landfall. we expect anywhere from eight to 12 inches of rains in areas we get a lot of fresh water flooding. like i say, they ve done years with the flood control systems and the big thing with this will be the wind and the storm surge, but i think we ll it s going to be category 3 here momentarily and we re going to go up to category 4 before landfall and technically the new models are coming out. bring it with this up to five miles an hour, cat 5. maybe a high cat 4 when we see it unfold. it s intensifying. yeah. that is value information. i really appreciate it. again, given your experience, how are you expecting the hours ahead to unfold where you are in houma?
distance what you can t see is that the lock and dam is actually right there. but that s totally underwater and that s of course interfering with commerce because you have barges and traffic up and down the arkansas river delivering goods and things like that. clearly they re not out there now, but we want to talk about in the distance on the other side of the river, that s where you have homes underwater and one of our journalists just got back from a boat ride and we are going to show you some of that video coming up in the next hour. it s only reachable by boat. a lot of folks, mandatory evacuated or self-evacuated days ago, and all of that downstream from points of here and the aerial pictures show the scale of how widespread the flooding is. record water levels put extra pressure on the levees and the dams and the flood control systems causing a levee breach north of here in dardanelle and