governor pat mccrory in north carolina who declared a state of emergency in all counties in his state. most of the action so far has taken place in florida. the first wind gusts to reach hurricane strength were recorded around 3:00 a.m. this morning. florida governor rick scott urged the 1.5 million residents in the storm s path to evacuate, evacuate, evacuate and many heeded the call. the latest count of power outages stand at 431,000 right now affecting customers almost entirely in florida. just moments ago governor scott pleaded with residents to get out of the storm s path while they still have time. we re going to have up to 12 feet of storm surge and we ll have waves on top of that. jacksonville area has a low lying area. if you have a chance to evacuate, you need to get out now. if your house is prone to flooding, if you re in an evacuation zone, you have to get
it s going to build up and continue to get worse as we go throughout the morning and go throughout the day today. as far as the current conditions go, it s at 120 miles per hour. it will weaken slightly. the eye disappeared there. that s great news. it shows us on satellite that it s not getting anymore organized at the last second. that s good. and movement to the northwest at 14. key today is this. the north-northwest up there in jacksonville area, also around the georgia area, you need that westward motion to stop. you want it to go more to the north and then possibly to the northeast later on today. there s some good but we still have a chance of this being a catastrophic event. all right. thanks very much. you heard bill mention daytona beach in the middle of the storm surge there. let s go down there to nbc s jay gray. jay, how s it looking? reporter: conditions intense now and building. i ll step out of the way and give you a realtime look. the wind gusting extreme at times
saying if you have not traveled, if you just hunker down where you are, you should not be out on the roadways at this point. again, the concern for jacksonville is later on today. you saw ron mott about to get hit near the eye of the storm. we expect the worst of it here in the afternoon as we expect the wind to pick up. the concern not so much here the wind, it s that potentially historic storm surge that the jacksonville area is expecting. thank you so much. stay with us. our coverage of hurricane matthew continues after a short break. is digital and industrial. like peanut butter and jelly. yeah. ham and cheese. cops and robbers. yeah. nachos and karate. ahh. not that one so much. the rest were really good. socks and shoes. ok, ricky.
we have them all over the place. let s see if gabe gutierrez in jacksonville is up and running. take it away. reporter: good morning. we are in between rain bands right now starting to see a light rain and the wind picking up just a bit. earlier we ve been seeing wind gusts of 20, 25 miles an hour but we expect it to really pick up in the early afternoon. that s when we expect to see wind gusts here about 80 miles an hour or so in the afternoon. as you ve been hearing and as we ve been reporting, major concern here in the jacksonville area will be this potentially historic storm surge. double digit storm surge. that s why the mayor ordered the evacuation of 450,000 people. water and sewer services a bit of the evacuation zone. that was shut off late last night here in the jacksonville area. this is an area part of florida that hasn t seen a hurricane like this impact them since 1898. so behind me you can see the power still on in jacksonville. things doing okay so far. throughout the
with that western eye wall over the south of west palm beach and ft. lauderdale. this would be all through the space coast. the tmelbourne area, new smyrna beach, all are going to be decimated by the storm with the path. let s move it further to the north and see what the update has for you. we re at the space coast at 8:00 a.m. 145 and with that path they come at with now, the last one is further to the coast and had it weakening down to 110 when closest to jacksonville. they still have this at a category four just off the jacksonville coast. this is horrible news for people in the georgia area. just got word they evacuate the coastal sections of georgia for good reason here. st. augustine, flagler county, flagler beach to daytona beach. worst case scenario forecast for you and it does weaken slightly. further to the north, we take it now. saturday, 8:00 a.m. as this white line right in here. that s where near the savannah