Hurricane Idalia is on track to make landfall on Florida s west coast Wednesday morning. Here are the latest updates about the storm s impact to the Myrtle Beach SC area.
idalia has intensified for the last 24 hours. this is tampa. tampa has not gotten the brunt of the storm. high tide at 4:00, the water is high, waves are splashing. you can see the causeway, that s the kind of things we re getting in tampa, more of the overwash, not hearing about destruction or anything like that. that s the good news for tampa. for you it s a glancing blow. for other areas it will be much worse. here s the latest from the hurricane center, 130-mile-per-hour maximum sustained winds. small eye. it is not widespread. it s about a 30-mile-wide eye where we ll have concentration of extreme winds, everywhere else like tallahassee, more tropical storm force winds and moving quickly, 17 miles per hour so moving onshore within the next two to three hours. the forecast, we have the landfill coming up and then we still think it s going to be a category 2 into southern georgia, even well after
concerned could sneak up towards tallahassee. anyone who s been to this portion of florida, it s forest. it s surrounded by trees and in the middle of trees so we are concerned with how much tree damage and power outages we ll have and how long that power outage could last for. the national weather service in tallahassee, the forecast for this area were saying if you re near that eye, you know, prepare not to be without power for possibly up to a month, maybe two months in some areas. this is s how serious the winds could be and how extreme the damage would be and areas of the storm surge, i mean, they were saying it could be uninhabitable for weeks to come, willie, so that s the potential we re dealing with. a category 4, category 3s, they leave behind extreme destruction. this one is a little different because of where the landfill is, not hitting a beach, not hitting a populated area, but it ll probably take a day or two to show you the pictures of where the worst is on this one.
meteorologist bill karins is here with a question for you. thanks for joining us. you know, hat s off to your team and a fantastic forecast up to this point. it s been amazing. talk a little about the concerns for savannah and charleston later on this evening with the high tide around 8:30. yeah, you know, we have a storm surge warning in effect from portions of savannah, hilton head up to charleston expecting inundation of three to five feet above ground level so that has the high tide coming in later today and the circulation moves over there. we can see that life-threatening storm surge develop so folks, if they ve been asked to evacuate, please rush those to completion this morning. one thing i m already getting questions on this too and everyone is like, is it possible this storm is really going to go off the coast and do a loop de loop and come back? what are your thoughts? there s a lot of uncertainty as we get into the longer time ranges expecting a slow southward to so