storm as it moves forward on its collision course with florida s gulf coast. now, it is expected to explode in intensity over the coming hours and make landfall overnight. it s safe to say that people living in that big bend area of florida, they have never lived through a hurricane like this. it is expected to bring a storm surge of up to 15 feet on top of powerful winds and excessive rainfall. places like fort myers beach are already experiencing flooding. that area is still recovering from hurricane ian that landed last fall. florida s governor, ron desantis, who is urged people to evacuate. he is warning that the damage here could be severe. you really have got to go back to the late 1800s to find a storm of this magnitude that will enter where this one looks like it is going to enter tomorrow. so we don t really have a historical analog in anybody s memory, so it is likely to cause a lot of damage. joining us now is cnn senior
these changes that have taken most folks by surprise. very much so. bill weir, thank you very much and continue to stay safe, please. i want to bring in now a u.s. coast guard public information officer, nicole grove, she s and tampa bay right now. so, nikole, how is the coast guard now preparing for idalia landfall in florida? so, we move some vessels down to fort myers beach area to be staged to go respond during and immediately after the storm if we have any emergencies. that is going to augment some of the crews that have stayed put to ride out the storm. we have also moved significant amount of aircraft over to west palm to do the same and respond as emergencies come up. our watch, our command center who are manned 24 hours have already gotten a few calls and have already assisted people who haven t quite heeded the warnings and they have gone out and hung out on the water for a little bit. we just greatly encourage
we were on vacation and came home early. i want to be in my district. because i assumed this would be tracked like ian or irma. i don t know what it is with storms first letter i but ian and irma tracked to be in panhandle area and kept moving and was going to hit tampa and coming south and hit sarasota and ended up going through charlotte harbor. anybody in florida when it s coming near your direction needs to be prepared to do the things they need to do to protect their families and their homes. ainsley: did a lot of people evacuate from the tampa area and head down to your district? we evacuated sarasota county evacuated zone 1 i believe. the coast line the barrier islands were evacuated yesterday. so, they didn t the best thing to do is to go inland because then you are going to get away from the storm surge, the wind aren t going to be as bad. but then you are just having to deal with the flooding type issues. but the best thing to do is to go inland and not be on the coas
what can you tell me as you work your way around to the studio? yeah. we lost power about 2:00 a.m. here. at least where i live in sarasota. it s been windy but nothing like what we experienced in ian. obviously what we experienced in ian the people in the big bend area of florida are going to be experiencing. and one of the blessings of this storm, i will say and thanks to your weather team and forecast team, for almost a week, you know, as early as this past weekend, the direction of the storm where they had predicted it was going turned out to be accurate. the challenge is that we had with hurricane ian last year is the track kept moving and a lot of people weren t prepared when it hit. so, kudos to all the weather teams in the forecasters, because they have had plenty of time up there in that big end area to prepare their homes and their families to evacuate, to do the things they need to do to prepare for a category 4 storm like this. ainsley: yeah. we do remember that i had a
and then at the last minute, you know, it s weather. steve: it turns. ainsley: it turned and hit your area. you all are probably still cleaning up from that storm. yeah. that s the challenge here. not a lot of people, obviously talking about it. it s been almost a year. i would say 30% of my district still has tarps on their roof. they are still working through. this thankfully this category 4 didn t hit here again where we are still trying to recover from the. [broken audio] this can last a significant amount of time to get your roof repaired and all these type of things and you are going to see that south of like the sea dar key area is going to experience what the north v. county to fort myers beach area experienced because south of the eye with the way the direction of the storm is spinning is where all that surge comes. in that s those pictures you saw from fort myers beach and north fort myers beach. i had the opportunity to go down there via helicopter a couple weeks ago t