tampa has never been directly hit by a major hurricane in the modern era when the population has just boomed in that area and looks for the most part when it s said and done as far as damage is considered, tampa will say, wow, we dodged another one. it looked like for awhile this could be headed straight there. this is as bad as it will get in the tampa area. the overwash that you ll see. i d say anywhere that s about elevation six feet or under, probably has dealing with water issues in tampa. all the elevations above six feet should be just fine which includes a lot of the downtown area but it s amazing. you talk to anyone in tampa. they know they re due and eventually they ll get their storm but looks like with this one, they finally lucked out. other concerns, i did want to show this map. this is a peak wind gust map we re expecting and this is just updated. the possibility of the forecast for perry in the next hour or two is wind gusts up to 127 miles per hour. that s what is comi
record-breaking storm surge of 12 to 16 feet in the landfill zone. florida officials warning the surge could impact areas up to 200 miles south into the tampa area and may leave areas uninhabitable for an extended period of time. several areas expected to be higher even than hurricane ian s last year which devastated the fort myers area and killed 149 people. in addition, hurricane-force winds will extend 25 miles outward from wherever the storm makes landfill. the tallahassee national weather service says wind likely will cause significant damage there too. as idalia tracks inland, officials are warning of major coastal flooding between savannah, georgia, up into charleston, south carolina, due to a tide already expected to be higher than normal due to the occurrence of a rare blue supermoon. let s go right to bill karins for the latest on what is shaping up, bill, to be a very, very serious storm. yeah, good morning, willy.
safely allow. we have pre-positioned aircraft in miami and west palm beach and they ll be the first ones to respond in the wake of the storm. yesterday these flight crews conducted overflights of the western florida area up to the big bend area and made callouts to mariners to seek shelter as well as to familiarize ourselves with the landscape prestorm arrival. so we re ready to go. we re also assembling our flood response teams from both inside and outside the state so we can assist both the florida team and fema with the urban search and rescue. we re also ready to launch aircraft urgent maritime search and rescue in the vicinity of tampa and the big bend area as the storm passes. our second priority is the reconstitution of ports and waterways really critical to our marine transportation system, so urgently needed so resources can make it to the communities in need.
building, that is tampa general hospital. that is the only level one trauma center in the tampa bay area. so what we have here is it s on an island. the only way to get there is by a bridge. there are a couple of bridges and what we have found is the water level is rising on that island and so we were over there ourselves. we had to leave because the water levels were rising to a level where we were thinking we might get stranded. they have what s called an aqua fence and have been doing it for some time and did it for ian last year. they install these barriers that are supposed to protect them from upwards of 15 feet of storm surge. that s important because this hospital is supposed to remain operational throughout the storm here and that s critical because trauma one, that means that the most serious injuries are supposed to be taken here. there s hospital employees that we saw walking around inside looking at us from the inside as we were outside so the biggest threat to tampa and
eye of the storm and those conditions will change very, very quickly. florida governor ron desantis a short time ago giving a briefing issuing that warning at this point it s time to stay inside and hunker down. joining us now live from tampa is nbc news correspondent marissa parra. good morning. what are you seeing there? reporter: willie, good morning. so, we are currently in what s called zone a, the mandatory evacuation area in tampa and you ll see why in just a moment because if you look over there, this is what happens when a car tries to drive through the evacuated zone. you can see tampa bay has completely washed over onto the road. this is a main road that we saw cars driving through even last night with ease. there were many cars that were driving through here, but obviously this is now the water is taking over a lot of the roads and this is something we have seen throughout the morning as we ourselves have been trying to assess the situation. if you look further down ove