state of emergency in anticipation of the storm. now it s moving past puerto rico where 3 million american citizens have been spared a direct hit. our meteorologist is at the cnn weather center. joining us with more. this is a dangerous storm getting stronger. give us the latest, please. by all means this is the storm that defied all odds. because it missed that direct hit with puerto rico. it doesn t get the land interaction to erode the storm. it s given time to organize and organize it has done. look at the radar compared today six hours ago to presently. we have a perfectly symmetrical eye wall. not what we want to see when we talk about strengthening hurricanes. it s become perfectly circular and some lightning around the storm which is a good indication the hurricane continues to deepen. dropping pressure and increase the winds. this is the latest from the national hurricane center. 80 miles per hour. we are anxiously awaiting for
it has nothing to run into. there is no land interaction to shred the storm. it s over the open waters, the warm september waters giving it the fuel to help it blossom. and then take a look at what happens between saturday and sunday. this is new as of that latest advisory, a category 4 storm. and we expect it to stay a category 4 storm before it makes landfall in florida. let s pay attention to the bahamas. we anticipate a hurricane watch issued later tonight, early friday morning. we ll keep you posted. you want to prepare and have your hurricane preparedness plan in place as early as today. i know the weather looks perfect in these places right now. you want to prepare. then it makes its way into the coast. this will be ironed out as early as tomorrow. right now we are looking along the coast of florida. we will watch this closely.
days out, we have something here. that means you should be making your plans for a couple of days from now when we can pinpoint where this is going to go. people can put the plans in place. shep? shepard: sounded like your team s hope yesterday was well, from an american perspective is the mountains in the dominican republic would break this up. or puerto rico. that would have been much better. it didn t happen. going right over the bbis, those are not enough mountains or land mass to disrupt it. so it hasn t had the land interaction to cause it to unravel. that s while it will remain at the hurricane strength and all of our guidance says it will get stronger. shepard: better sense by friday? yeah, by friday we ll have a better sense. a lot of things five days out that contribute to where a storm is going to go, including features, atmospheric features across the pacific, not even
conditions will continue to deteriorate throughout the day tomorrow. especially into the afternoon. as this gets closer and expected to make landfall on puerto rico by the time we get get into tomorrow evening. we have hurricane watches in place around puerto rico and is pan yoela and it is interesting to see the interaction with puerto rico as we get into tomorrow it will have earlier landfall previously thinking around 8:00 p.m., now it is being pushed up to around 2:00 p.m. so of course now is the time to prepare for the puerto rican residents, so 65-mile-per-hour winds, landfall and 74 would be a hurricane. so still a little bit of strengthening possible and once this is on the north side of puerto rico, depending on what happens to it with that land interaction, it is going to enter some warm waters around the bahamas. it is also going to have a little less wind shear. so we could see even more strengthening by the time it makes it to the southeast u.s.
them with both parents killed. thank you, athena, i appreciate it. now to another developing story we re watching. a dangerous storm is bearing down on the united states. florida is bracing tonight for hurricane michael, a major storm that could make landfall as a category 3, powerful category 3 very soon. outfront now is jennifer gray in the cnn weather center. jennifer, where and when are you looking for this to hit? this is looking to make landfall along the panhandle on wednesday, possibly midday, as a potential category 3, a major storm. right now it is just on that north side of cuba as a category 1. it s had a lot of land interaction so it hasn t been able to intensify as rapidly as it will be able to in the next couple of days as it enters the waters of the gulf of mexico that are very, very warm. so ripe conditions for further development during the next 24 to 48 hours. winds up 84 miles per hour, gusts of 100, moving to the north at 12 miles an hour. this could be a major