on track to hit florida sometime this week with the panhandle in the entire west coast at risk. standing by. let s start with meteorologist tracking it all. where is it going to go? it does not look like a whole lot right now. lifting its way up towards the gulf of mexico. that is when this thing really strengthens. you only need 79-degree water to fuel a storm. suddenly this thing kind of explodes and become a big monster of a storm. hurricane morning s currently in cuba because this is where it will headfirst before lifting into the gulf of mexico and then we focus on florida. tuesday and wednesday, probably even thursday running up to the florida panhandle where this may make landfall. that would be a category four hurricane. this would be a strong one. you will kind of see as a storm comes together begins to strengthen, and i wall over the island of cuba on early early tuesday morning. even if you are not making landfall right away on the west coast of florida, gettin
close at midnight and will remain closed until after the storm. norah, you will recall last year, hurricane ian switch tracks at the very last minute, so officials are telling everyone along florida s gulf coast to be on alert. norah? norah: i do remember that. cristian benavides, thank you. that is why 300 miles up florida s gulf of is under that hurricane morning. let s bring in meteorologist chris warren from our partners at the weather channel. good evening, chris. chris: good evening, norah. time is quickly running out to prepare for this dangerous storm. it is still a tropical storm, but idalia will quickly become a hurricane, in fact, it will become a major hurricane with winds sustained at 120 miles an hour at least before making landfall. alog with the strong winds, dangerous, life-threatening storm surge is going to be a very real concern. people are told to evacuate,
on track to hit florida sometime this week with the panhandle in the entire west coast at risk. standing by. let s start with meteorologist tracking it all. where is it going to go? it does not look like a whole lot right now. lifting its way up towards the gulf of mexico. that is when this thing really strengthens. you only need 79-degree water to fuel a storm. suddenly this thing kind of explodes and become a big monster of a storm. hurricane morning s currently in cuba because this is where it will headfirst before lifting into the gulf of mexico and then we focus on florida. tuesday and wednesday, probably even thursday running up to the
one or miles per hour. and a little bit sloppy up to this point but it does seem like it s coming together over warm water, it will allowed to continue to exist by getting up to probably to a category four storm for a very strong category three so we have a large area here hurricane morning strictly place new orleans stretching up towards the west and a lot of this low-lying song. details to definitely feel the strong impact from the storm system pretty here is our official tracking we have a pretty good idea of where this is going to be heading the intensity and we will run their but it does look as it comes a category four hurricane winds at 130 miles an hour think of landfall having sometime tomorrow afternoon into the early evening hours but i do want to point out that even though that s when the landfall is, this is the only thing to pay attention to some of these really strong winds already arriving early under sunday morning and went 7076 miles now evening of the surrounding are
110 miles to the east of west palm, it is barely moving at this point. they are saying 1 mile per our. that gives local officials from the national hurricane center the ability to go out and say if this is what s happening, this is what we believe is going to happen, listen to all of the warnings but as you heard ken graham say, it is life-threatening right now because the storm has barely moving. rick leventhal live on jacksonville beach and as you just heard there, hurricane morning now where you are. and jacksonville beach officially closed today but we still have dozens of people out here mostly taking pictures and checking out the surf which is pretty violent today, much more so than yesterday, you see surfers out there whom the only ones that we can see in the water but just check out the waves smashing up against the post here which is also close today. if not your typical labor day here on the beach in jacksonville and many of the