area. millions of floridians will begin seeing impacts with life-threatening wins tonight. this is a serious threat of significant, there s a serious threat of storm surge along the west coast of florida. there s 15 feet of impact above ground level. temple will see a surge of 5 - 8 feet. the big bend area will see a surge of 3 - 6 feet. this is clearly a life-threatening situation. remember, in southwest florida, the storm surge comes after the strongest wind. do not think the storm is over when the wind slows down. local officials will let you know when it is safe. the storm surge will rush in and it could kill you. when it happens, the storm water rushes in and rushes out.
matter the strength or size of storm, it has to do with the counterclockwise as i understand and as it moves over land we get the possibility of weak spin-offs of tornadoes, the problem is a lot of are rain rafts, we can t see them coming you have weather radios, you want to make sure they are on. the problem, eric, we tell people to go to the lowest portion of the home with tornado and with storm surge the highest level of the home, so it s just there are no words except prayers right now and hopefully people are listening to their local officials. eric: prayers and thoughts of nation for the people of florida. arthel. arthel: florida keys are now seeing the first effects of hurricane irma as the eye of the storm moves closer to the coastline, adam housely live in key largo florida with the latest, hey, adam. hey, arthel. the conditions are continue to go deteriorate over the last five hours, six hours, the winds now are consistently 30 to
governor any moment now. we will bring that to you live. first, janice has been covering the storm. janice, roughly 13 or 14 hours we will have landfall. then what do we expect. it will affect millions of folks across the sunshine state. that s why were talking about potentially catastrophic damage for millions of people along the west coast. it s more vulnerable than the east coast because we have a lot of low lying areas and storm surge will inundate these low-lying zones. let s get to it. we have a new advisory coming out. that will give us the coordinates and the strength of the storm and where we think it will be. we are going through some structural changes which means the storm is trying to strengthen again. it s got about 100 miles of warm water to travel before it
preparations. all around the keys where they have small medical centers, they had mandatory evacuations. most of the hospitals in florida i spoke for them today, they are staying open. of course, no elective surgery, asking everybody to not go to the hospitals if you don t have to. their medical staff is being sequestered, nursing staff which is always great, nurses are fantastic because they are the backbone of every hospital. eric: they are. they work double, triple shifts in these types of emergencies and they stay around. eric: their families absolutely. they really do a fantastic work. you have to give kudos to them. everything is going to get date corrupted. after the storm we will have a lot of new stories regarding all the medical implications of the hurricane. eric: i certainly hope people are safe and they have heeded the warnings. one little factoid which is really weird, one of the
with the storm s latest track, families in the panhandle need to be on hilar for severe weather including tropical storm and hurricane force winds. here in tallahassee it will likely that we will expense hurricane force winds and families must start preparing now. we saw what hurricane irma did and we can see serious some more severe threats. if you have been ordered to evacuate, you need to leave now. this is your last chance to make a good decision. evacuations are in place across the state. more than 6.5 million floridians have been ordered to evacuate. do not put yourself or your family s life at risk. now is the time to do the right thing for your family. school buses are heating evacuations. please take advantage of this service. if you need to leave and you are unable to do so for any reason, call (#18)342-3557 and we will do everything we can to get you out.