obviously to the north of us. they don t want folks to become complacent and start heading out thinking that, really, everything is over with because, we re not expected to see possible storm surge associated with this hurricane until late in the morning throughout the afternoon as you can probably tell. the rain has picked throughoute afternoon as you can probably tell. the rain has picked up here, the concern is still the flooding and at least when we re talking about the tampa bay area. having spent the better part of the last 12 hours here, just about everyone that we came across it tonight, and everyone that we spoke to, said that they did not think that things were going to be that bad. so they made that decision to go ahead and stay put. they are not going to move inland, they are not going to evacuate or go to one of these hurricane shelters. that is, of course, a message that emergency officials did not want to hear, although you can understand why. this time, last year or aro
carlos, i ll start with you. tampa is already looking at potentially 4 to 7 feet of storm surge if idalia shifts in its track, obviously that could get a lot worse. what are you seeing there, what are people preparing for? reporter: well, we know there are two-man todayer to evacuation orders that have gone out here in hillsborough county which is home to the tampa bay area as well as out in pinellas county which is to the west of where we are, that is home to the clearwater st. pete area. as you mentioned, the concern in this part of hillsborough county, the downtown tampa area is the flooding associated with this hurricane. as you noted, we re talking about a storm surge anywhere between 4 to 7 feet and when you take a look at the bay here behind me, you can see it won t take a whole lot of water out here in order for some of the flooding to take place. this time tomorrow, we ll have taken into the account the rain which has already started to fall and as well as high tide and the
across the river out here, tampa general hospital, they ve already got their floodgates up. we re told that that can handle up to 15 feet of a storm surge. but as you mentioned, brianna, this time last year this part of tampa was seeing a similar threat with yet another powerful storm off the coast of florida. however, that storm ended up passing to the south of here. and so the folks out here, they re getting ready, they ve got their sandbags, they ve opened up hurricane shelters and they re getting ready for whatever may come their way although right now it seems the storm is just going to hug the coast and miss the tampa bay area. brianna? carlos suarez live for us in tampa. thank you. jim? also in the crosshairs tallahassee. and join meg now is the mayor of tallahassee, florida, john daly. mayor, i know it s busy where you are. thanks for taking the time this afternoon. thanks, jim. appreciate it. so we just heard our chad myers describe the particular threat from storm sur
flood gates. we re told that can handle a storm surge of up to 15 feet, we re expecting maybe half of that to take place. there are two mandatory evacuation orders that have gone out in this part of the state. over in pinellas county, the st. pete clear water area, there s one mandatory evacuation order there. the other is in hillsboro county, home to the tampa bay area. the city s mayor had a news conference earlier today where she talked about some of these preparations that are now underway. here s a bit of what she said. what we say is you hide from the wind and run from the water. so if you can just go in 10, 20 miles inland where the water won t be an issue, that s what we are advising to all of our residents. and in anticipation of whatever effects come this way, they have opened up hurricane shelters in hillsboro county.
county and tampa bay area is going to be the flooding, right? we re talking about a storm surge as you noted, jake, anywhere between 4 and 7 feet. right now the tide is falling, but this time tomorrow we expect to take into account of course all this rain which is starting to fall. we re talking anywhere between 4 to 8 inches of it. we ve also got to figure in high tide, and then we ve got the storm surge going to make its iowa in here. the concern is the flooding, hurricane shelters and we re told those can hold up to 20,000 people. let s stay with the tampa area right now and bring in the tampa fire rescue chief. chief tripp forecasters are predicting up to a few feet of the storm surge, a few feet above that. you re born and raised in tampa. how concerned are you? how are you preparing? we re definitely concerned. we did do an evacuation zone for those low-lying areas and making