Going to one particular shelter near ft. Myers. Many of them are still waiting to get in. Were going to check in with our drew griffin whos there in the hour ahead. But first, lets get the latest most porntdly on where this storm is headed. Allison chinchar is in the Weather Center. Bring us up to date. Right, anderson. Take a look at what we have right now, imagery where we can see the latest on irma. Winds 125 Miles Per Hour gusting up to 155 Miles Per Hour. The movement its been what we call wobbling where its going back and forth between west and north and west and north. The question is when does it finally start to make that really sharp turn to the north. We focus on the maximum wind gusts. Notice for the most part its the western half of florida where we have our strongest winds. Key west, this will be our peak maximum wind gusts around 138 Miles Per Hour. But say up around ft. Myers 136, even tampa going to be in the triple digits right around 116 Miles Per Hour. The track its
ft. myers, the real threat in the florida keys which is going to get hit hard and it got to cat 5 on the florida keys, that could give some structural damage to the 7-mile bridge. but that s a whole set of other problems. but coming up the west coast, if it moves out into the gulf and parallels the coast, that s the worst of all possible situations because the counterclockwise rotation takes the water and runs it up the bays like charlotte harbor and tampa bay. and once, anderson, it gets up in the bays, there s no place for it to go. so it walls up and becomes a huge, huge storm surge. right. at this point, i mean, they re talking about for tampa bay estimates of 5 to 8 feet of storm surge. of course depending on the wind you have waves on top of that. and even here at ft. myers could
meteorologists have been saying strong storm surge on the eastern part of the storm, the northeast quadrant is where we watch closely for some of the most dangerous conditions. all right. ben in punta gorda, you have your work cut out for you for the next few days. i hope people heed your warnings there. over here in miami the winds have picked up consistently blowing now fairly strongly. going to feel these winds for some time all over the southern part of florida as the storm moves up west toward anderson cooper is in ft. myers. anderson. yeah, john, thanks very much. i want you to meet captain rodriguez, commander of hurricane operations for the city of ft. myers police department. how are things going? so far so good. our community s listening. we re starting evacuations and actually wrapping them up. giving some rides to people that still need it, but overall very good. the public buses that were in operation to try to get people shelters that are offered people call 211,
the track itself will still take it over portions of the keys and then riding up along the western coast making a very close call towards naples, ft. myers, even into tampa. those are going to be the cities of concern going forward in about the next 36 to 48 hours. here s a look at the forecast radar. this shows you not just where it s headed but where some of the heavy rain is going to be as well. when we get to sunday morning, this is when we really start to see incredibly heavy downpours for cities like miami, into ft. myers, then we push into sunday afternoon and evening. now tampa starting to get some incredibly heavy rainfall. and then the system itself begins to make its way into portions of georgia and also into south carolina. overall rainfall totals we re talking widespread 6 to 10 inches of rain. but it could even be slightly higher than that. especially when you get some of those outer bands where you could end up getting incredibly heavy downpours for several hours at a ti
what can you do? guard your card? guard your card? just like your credit card. nobody gets my number, unless i know they should have it. to protect your identity, new medicare cards without social security numbers will be mailed next year. visit medicare.gov/fraud stay sharp people! our coverage continues now here of hurricane irma from here in ft. myers, florida, where it s been deceptively calm in terms of weather throughout the day. just a little bit of gusts of winds in the last few minutes but nothing serious. nothing to really indicate the monster storm, the deadly storm that is to come. and the people here in ft. myers woke up today realizing that because the storm had shifted to the west. they re talking about storm surge down in naples, which isn t too far from here, south of here, in 10 to 15 feet range.