deadly tornadoes that killed at least three people in louisiana. at least five tornadoes touched down across louisiana over a 24-hour period. according to the national weather service. a total of 22 tornadoes popped up in the southeast so far that number bnd to rise. we should go inside. the police chief says 200 homes and businesses have been destroyed. trees from a whole nother neighborhood. power crews working to restore power across the state. strongest tornado touched down in farmerville. national weather service says ef 3 with peak winds of 140 miles per hour. of the whole house lifted. trent rode out the storm in a bedroom closet. he says the tornado tore through his living room and neighbors had to dig through debris to save him and his dog. you don t want to go through nothing like that. it s like a bomb went off when it went through the house. thank god i made it. a cold front is pushing the system and fox weather
heading in the direction of orlando and that is just going to pick up and pick up and pick up. so let me just look at the timing here and you see the winds are going to come down as we go forward in time, that is peak winds, but the gusts in orlando, and as you said earlier, all of central florida is under a hurricane warning because even with 65 mile an hour winds, gusts are expected to be in the 70, 80, to 90 mile per hour range. and timing it out, watch this, the hurricane force gusts are in this area here in orange. so i want you to watch the orange and the time here. so here we are at midnight, south of the orlando area at midnight tonight. and the by the way, the hurricane force sustained winds are right here. but as we go forward in time, here we are at 6:00 in the morning, in come the hurricane force gusts in orlando and the surrounding area there. and there we go to noon, this thing is crawling up the state. still, hurricane force gusts in central florida. then we go to 6:00
storm surge. tampa experienced it this morning. for example, around 8:00, the tied was beginning to recede from tampa bay. they called the phenomenon the reverse storm surge. when storm winds push water out of the bay, for example, tampa s mccay bay was three feet below expected levels during low tide at 10:30 and the down side of this is when the water comes rushing back at high tied, forecasters were predicting six to eight feet in terms of a storm surge. explain what that is and why that happens and how bad was it? well, in the same way that the hurricane pushed water in the gulf up into naples and then up the river to fort myers and in over the islands there, that s the winds pushing the water. well, if the winds are coming off the land in tampa, they re pushing the water out of tampa bay. so that happened, and the
this afternoon, and, you know the circulation comes around like this. so the gulf water was being pushed at 3:00 this afternoon into naples, into cap teva, over sanibel and the nearby shore lines there, and then, as we went forward in time today, this system moved in and that changed the wind direction a little bit and then it pushed the water up the ca loose a hatchy river flooding downtown forth myers. so we ended up with both fort myers and naples and the surrounding areas all under water and under a hundred plus mile an hour winds. now tonight phase two is just starting. this area of rain. so it s hard to make out the center of circulation. it s kind of in this area here. but the up to the north of it we have this incredible area of rain, 12-19 inches of rain has fallen today there. they re predicting record flooding in that area and this is the part of the system that s
have our fox news chief meteorologist rick reichmuth with us. rick this has been rough so far. really has. three things, the storm surge that broke records in fort myers and naples as well by a lot by the way, three feet higher than we had ever seen from any kind of storm surge in the past. that obviously causing all that flooding right along the immediate coast. then we have the winds, actual verified winds of 140 miles an hour in cape corral. a lot of this wind was really prolonged because it s such a slow-moving storm and then you have the rainfall. because it s so slow we get rainfall that just continues to batter the state and we ll see big time inland flooding concerns. this made land fall in the exact same space that hurricane charlie came on shore in 2004 which is amazing to have two massive hurricanes or two strong hurricanes like this come on shore in the exact same spot, hard to imagine, because it came on so strong, it s still a category 2 hurricane after having made land