unheard of and unprecedented in northwest florida, not in recorded history has there been anything like that and when you consider that well to the west of the eye wall, well to the west, dozens of miles west on panama city beach, they reported wind gusts of 129 miles an hour. we can expect wind gusts to reit 165, 170 miles an hour. along tyndall air force base in england, the towns of windhaven, parker, callaway, as far west as springfield, we have no reporters in the city of panama city proper, population 37,000. the storm itself is coming right over it. just west of that city is where rick leventhal is, you should be getting pounded right now. yeah, we are. there s a lot of stuff lying
i phone. shepard: can we track this, please? go ahead. this was as the storm was coming ashore. you can just see how strong the winds are. shepard: this is panama city beach. the wind is not coming from the water. the wind is coming from the land going toward the water. this is pushing the water out. the wind coming off tin land head toward the beach. this is extraordinary. from his i phone, panama city beach. you can see they have supplies lined up ready to go. the wind is just insane. that s right next to a stucky. they must be right off an overpass. panama city beach thank you, kate. panama city beach is really three sections. originally panama city beach had a front beach road. live pictures from panama city. everything was along front beach road. they call it the miracle mile. this long stretch, when i was a kid, it had ferris wheels,
what s happening now is the eastern edge of panama city, the city itself, not the beaches, but the city itself, is getting pounded. they expect extreme winds, high water, especially east of the storm. sustained winds close to 130, 140 miles an hour within the city of panama city itself. along panama city beach, that 27-mile stretch, there will be damage. there will be power outages. but largely, the worst of this storm has missed panama city beach. unfortunately, it s been given to the air force base and people in apalachicola. the central pressure of this storm has dropped to 919 millibars making it an extremely powerful storm. if there s good news, it did not hit a great population center. at least upon landfall.
shepard: phil keating live in apalachicola. let s go west of the storm center along the beautiful panama city beaches. jeff flock is there from the business network. the eye of the storm missed you by 18 miles. you re a lucky man. reporter: i know. i ll ya, i can t imagine what it would have been like. i heard you point out earlier, fortunately over a nonpopulated area with the worst of it. we re tremendously fortunate here because this, as you know, this is tremendously populated. we ve experienced only category 1 conditions, category 2 conditions maybe at the most. we re not at the height of it. i think we re past the height of it. absolutely fortunate. not that there isn t some damage, but nothing like it certainly could have been. we re still yet to know. still whether we saw a category
make landfall in the florida panhandle since the 1850s, had this storm not jogged to the right, but jogged to the right, panama city beach would be reduced to ruins. instead, it is not. it s going to have a very bad storm. but the great thing is the high season ended. there are still people who are owners who come down september into october. but let s face it, people move on to college football and the beaches begin to return to normal. people at fort walton beach have gone back to school. they re all closed. all across bay county, walton, all of those areas that were so concerned, you have been spared the worst of it all. the storm has gone to the eastern side of panama city proper. we don t really know what will haven is gonna look like when this storm passes.