tells you something. this storm will have wide reaching impacts for the entire western coastline of the florida peni peninsula, and so much time and energy to push this water into the little nooks and crannies of all those west facing shorelines of the gulf of mexico here on the florida peninsula. so we expect conditions here to remain as is through high tide for the next hour or so. we ll see the tide start to fall throughout the course of the morning but another high tide cycle around 2:00 this afternoon. and by the way this is made worse by the impacts of what is a super moon. so we have a greater tug, a greater tidal swing. so that will exascerbate the threats. and this is phil in new york. for context for viewer, where you are standing, that is a central organ for commuter, a central roadway in tampa if you
wind coming through where i am, which is a good 50 miles from where you are. that s how large this storm is. these are tropical storm winds. this isn t hurricane force and it s causing flooding already. we were standing near that blue, where you see the sort of seats there, those benches. now we ve moved up because now we have got a couple of feet of water on to shore here in crystal river. but it is nothing compared to what people are seeing in cedar key where you are, mr. bobbitt. thank you so much for doing what you are doing for those neighbors, for being so kind. i am happy to hear that you are on a hill, that you are elevated, because that s so, so important. we will check back with you. please stay as safe as possible. we appreciate your time. this is the kind of person you want in your community, taking care of others. that does it for us. we are going to start all over again to give you the very latest right now.
before it makes landfall. i want to emphasize nothing has changed about the impacts, whether there is a low and cat 4, or high end cat 3, the impacts to the storm will remain the same. you have this extreme wind warning for these counties here, until 9:15 a.m., we are anticipating these winds here to exceed that 80, 90, even 100-mile-per-hour threshold. right now most of them sustained about 20 to 40 miles per hour. we re getting wind gusts around tampa and sarasota, even brooksville in that 50 to 60-mile-per-hour range and those will continue to go up as we go through the next several hours. tornado watches also in effect for both portions of florida as well as georgia, that goes until 3:00 this afternoon. we have already had nearly a dozen tornado warnings already so far this morning, those are going to continue, again, even throughout the afternoon, the vast majority of them are going to come from some of these outer bands. so it doesn t even have to be in the center of the storm fo
way and show you some of the homes that are quite susceptible to this just within the past 45 minutes since we ve been here, the water has come up and over this boulevard. you can see it here kind of the marshy area and it also impacted the other side of bay shore boulevard which goes in the opposite direction away from downtown. and you can see these homes, the water is starting to lap up into their front yards. listen, high tide was about 15 minutes ago. so we do expect that the water level should slowly start to come down before another high tide cycle occurs later this afternoon. but sara, this is all working in coordination together. not only the push of water from idalia, but also high tide and a super moon which gives that greater tug on the tidal cycles here across the bay and into the eastern gulf of mexico. the storm continues to strengthen even if you are well away from the center of this storm. this is proof this storm could