huge hospitals, you have a good setup as far as generation. there will be power outages. interesting how the morning unfolds, the tornado threats, still under tornado watch until 6:00 a.m. eastern time, we have a warning on the board for orange county and osceola. we have only gotten a taste of the rain band. threat for tornados will go up. we ll check back in a couple of minutes, we have full coverage on the ground. mattin ifn joins us from upon st. pete beach. what is your experience like over the last couple of hours? you know, the weather has been dramatically fluctuating.
hour winds by wednesday, 2:00 a.m. it gets near the coast by the early morning hours. you ll start to see those squally conditions working on the outer rain bands across the state of florida today. if you re preparing for evacuating or anything else, getting your home ready, you want to finish those preparations earlier in the day today and definitely by the evening hours tonight. we ll have the watch this as it moves across parts of georgia and the carolinas tomorrow. we could see some issues when it comes to storm surge and heavy rain, too. we re going to see that center come onshore likely in this region. wherever the center is to the right side of that storm, that s where the worst wall of water as far as storm surge is going to be. 8 to st. feet is possible. it matters exactly where that comes onshore, jonathan, because of what i just mentioned. people need to take this seriously especially if you live on barrier island. 8 to 12 feet is hard to believe. real quick, how warm-wate
surge. look, we re already starting to see some of the first outer rain bands reach the west coast, the florida peninsula. it s close. it is now in the open waters of eastern gulf of mexico. we talk about how that s going to prime it for strengthening and deepening. so we anticipate that. and that is what we re seeing on all the radar and satellite that we have noticed. what will happen, what people should expect this morning as these bands approach the coastline. then you ll get the tropical storm force gusts. it s only later tonight and certainly into the day tomorrow where we get the hurricane onset of the winds. but that will be closer to the big bend of florida, the ap la cha coast down to the cedar key region. that s the area that s most prone to storm surge. and the cedar key region is being told to get out now because they could be completely inundated when this storm makes its way right on to the land. let s go now to our fema administrator standing by live for us. thank y
are getting closer to sunrise. actually behind the camera. and this will give us light of day of really the most quiet weather that we will see for the next 24 hours. i mean, the outer rain bands are going to hit this afternoon. and anyone in the state of florida, when they go to bed tonight, that s where they are going to ride out this storm. this has the potential of being historic storm for the state of florida. in fact, there has never been a category 4 hurricane to hit the big bend of florida and although right now the official forecast is calling for cat 3, it s not out of the question that this could be a stronger storms, with the landfall across the big bend of florida closer to cedar key, unfortunately that is worst case scenario for tampa bay where i am. that means we will have the optimal approach for storm surge. and for tampa bay, it s really like a baseball mitt. all that water push into the baseball mat is going to be stacking up on the ground. we could see 7 feet of sto
coming in at category 1, 75 miles per hour. that barely puts it into hurricane status, but it is going to rapidly intensify as we get through the next 20ish hours before it makes landfall. we re talking it needs 35-mile-per-hour increase in the winds in order to be considered rapid intensification. it ll definitely get that. right now moving north at 14 miles per hour, that pace is going to pick up, as well. it is right now leaving us with some rain across parts of cuba and moving into parts of florida later today with the outer rain bands. check out all of these watches and warnings we already have up. tropical alerts include much of the state of florida, including a hurricane warning that goes around parts of the big bend, stretching down past tampa bay. that area looks like it is going to be the most impacted. let s talk about the impacts. we ve got the track taking it into parts of the gulf of mexico which, by the way, are ridiculously warm. upper 80s for water temperatures there a