Washington. A fox news alert. A massive hurricane that could be the most destructive in the history of the country is about to slam into florida. Hurricane milton could make landfall as early as 8 00 p. M. Eastern, exactly one hour from now. Now, the national Weather Service says the window to evacuate has closed. Shelter in place now. Tampa, Fort Myers and orlando are all expected to face lifethreatening impacts. Tornadoes have already been seen and many of floridas West Coast beaches are at risk as well of being wiped out. Now, first responders in st. Petersburg have paused all operations. Not responding to any emergencies until it is safe to do so. We will bring you conch from across the state but, first, we start in Brayden Ton Florida where Fox Weather Robert ray is standing by, robert . Yeah. Laura, good evening to you. And you see the Manatee River behind me that is raging with up to 80 mileperhour winds that have occurred here in this part of the Gulf Coast. We are not too far
reporter: we re looking at five tracks, but the most significant was across the macon county, lee county line. we re looking at possibly an ef-3 tornado, perhaps stronger. we re going to find out when we get down and do an onsite storm survey tomorrow. and i know there are teams heading that direction. if you think it s at least an ef-3, what kind of damage are you expecting? reporter: unfortunately, there were homes that were completely destroyed, trees that were snapped off. we have seen some indication of debarking of trees, which is really a signal of a violent tornado. one of the things that was most impressive about this storm was the debris signature we saw. the radar can actually detect objects other than rainfall, and based on that debris that we saw, one of the most strongest debris signatures we have seen, we issued an actual tornado imagine, issued very rarely by the national weather service. do you know how much warning people had ahead of these