ahead to scratch our heads, wonder what happened. people are already tweeting me saying how come we re not talking about climate change. we re trying to save people s lives. there will be studies done saying how much worse the storm was because of climate change. that will come in the weeks ahead. for now let s focus on trying to help people and see what we re doing with our storm. we still have extreme wind warnings in effect which is an extremely rare event. whole communities are told to shelter in place because of hurricane force winds coming over the top of you. that s happening now as the center of the storm is crossing over i-10. the troopers probably have this road completely shut off. there s likely trees blocking the road in most of this area. here s a smaller view. the area that was hit the hardest that you re going to see pictures of homes destroyed, looks like a tornado went through, is mexico beach. this is the last rain bands coming through this area. they re going to hav
like and it was such a rapid ll intensifying storm throughout the morning. when the eye hit further to the west, we ve been seeing reports of damage in mexico beach and port saint joe, some of that significant damage there. here we re dealing with the flooding. when this dies out a little more we plan to go back to that downtown area and see how much of it was indeed flooded. but the hotel we were staying at, overnight we were told it had four feet of water around it so we had to move to higher ground. did you lose power early? here s the thing. this hotel lost power. the hotel overnight, it was further on into the morning before we lost power but certainly driving here we did see a lot of downed trees and power lines. the concern here is that one road, u.s. 98 in and out of it, it may be impassable for quite a while. that s a big deal.
that may have gotten damaged, around me the downed trees, the debris still flying around. it is not safe to drive around. hearing this gentleman that you just spoke to, daniel, here in port saint joe, the hospital closed at 5:00 p.m. yesterday. there is no shelter in port saint joe. the mayor telling me this storm caught a lot of people off guard here and the storm hit 15 minutes, a short 15-minute drive from where i am in mexico beach. we ve started to hear about businesses along the ghost thco lot of these places have been completely wiped out because of this strongest storm to have hit the florida panhandle on record. mexico beach is in bay county, a different county from where i am now, 2,000 people or so, but
have a child there possibly. monday evening i drove from tallahassee down to st. pete. every gas station was backed up with people trying to get gas. everybody was getting gas, trying to think about how to get out, what to do when that happens. i want to go to port saint joe. it s just off the map. it s to the east of where this came the hurricane came up here at mexico beach. port saint joe is where mariana was. you will have seen her goggles blow off because of the wind, you will have seen her hold onto a railing, forced to go inside a hotel. you should be experiencing weaker winds now, mariana. weaker winds, ali, but after all that, we are not able to come live with a live picture with you because cell phones are down and now is when you really start to see the cell towers
don t get excited about markets? gusts coming through. not until not until they 50% left, 50% stayed. get we see this kind of movement. i know every neighbor i have within a quarter mile is here. the market down more than 4% in a week. with all we re covering let me show you what s going today, this number still gets on over here right now. this is the storm, the eye of our attention. it s a very serious number. we re going to discuss it more. the storm, that clear blue part. thank you for the hours of it has moved. coverage i ve been watching it came on board around mexico prior to my shift starting. beach just east of panama city, thank you for the coverage you ll be providing for us. this is an important story. west of port saint joe. it s moving inland now. ali velshi with us all you can see huge affects of the afternoon. we take over with a look at this storm. this is i-10, a major interstate history making storm. that goes across the country, think of it this