per hour, you re going to feel it everywhere. and here in this barrier island, they issued a mandatory evacuation order. people are not walking around. we spoke to police officers yesterday and they said that when winds reach that is clearly the case right here, they can t be out patrolling the streets. hopefully here everybody is hunkered down and everybody is in their homes or in shelters where they re going to spend the storm because the next couple of hours will just be crucial here for miami. as you ve been mentioning throughout the hour, tornado warnings have been issued overnight, especially in ft. lauderdale but also towards miami beach. clearly here in the southern point of the beach you ll feel it and see it here. chris? i can see exactly what you re going through and i want you be able to get to somewhere where you re sheltered if you need to. leave if you have to, but give us a sense of what it feels like to be in the middle of this right now. reporter: it s just
out there. go ahead. chris, first responders for the past couple days have told me when sustained winds reach 40 miles per hour, we re clearly past that point here, they cannot be out on the streets anymore. that goes for police officers, and the residents of miami beach. yesterday when we were here, there was a change in mood when the storm shifted and went west, people were out on the beach, surfing, not what officials here want to be looking at. hopefully when people try to come out this morning and see the conditions they will go back home. that is what first responders and that emergency management team want to see here today. because the storm wasn t going to hit miami directly, it let people s guards down here. but again hopefully the expectation is when they try to come out today and see the
evening hours, chris. this situation only going to get worse. from the images we re seeing already, it s a terrible situation. when i was looking at mike seidel who is our weather channel meteorology igs and he could barely stand up and talking about the potential just there s those pictures from miami. this is not where they ll see the worst of it, but he was saying potentially 100 mile-per-hour winds. what does that look like? yeah. it absolutely hurts to be out in that conditions. then you have to watch out for flying debris coming at you. basically every day objects become projectiles. it s very dangerous. we re showing that so we can show you the force of this, but the everyday tom and joe should be inside their house bunkered down for this. i ve been out in storms much, much less significant than this and i saw bar gaj cans flying, signs flying. you definitely don t want to
else. so the respect that people may not have learned to have yet, they will learn during this hurricane, chris. if the pier survives it will be interesting. just below the pier, the geological survey have set up a storm surge monitor. we thank you for that. we appreciate you. i want to go to mike seidel, meteorologist who is across this oh my goodness, across the state in miami. this is by far the toughest winds we ve seen. what is going on? where are you exactly? reporter: i can t hear you on the other end in new york. my apologies. dealing with the tropical storm force winds 45 to 50 miles an hour and they re gusting now 60 to 70. what you see in front of me is rainwater that s been backed up in the drainage system. the surge has not come up much. we re expecting a five foot surge here which is better than what we were expecting two days
back to you, chris. thank you so much, thomas roberts. take care out there. i want to go to miguel almaguer, give us the geography. let s not assume people know where this is. you re what, south of miami where you are and obviously the winds are pretty rough there. yeah, chris. we re not that far from the florida keys. highway 1 the bridge that leads in here is two miles away from there. that may be a better geographical point for you. yes, we re the southern end of the state of florida. we re probably about a 20 minute drive from the florida keys. over the last 12 hours here, wind speeds here have certainly increased. they re pretty dramatic now. they have been more tough than this over the last couple of hours. the rain here has also been an issue. it didn t feel as though