theodore. joining me is steve patterson in st. petersburg, florida. geographically that is near tampa. tell us how things look where you are. reporter: yeah, joy, much further north from the eye of the storm. make no mistake, this area dodged a bullet yesterday. they were predicting that the eye of the storm would actually be somewhere close to here, a storm in which we haven t seen in 100 years a direct hit to this area. thankfully that didn t happen, but that doesn t mean this area has been spared. the wind has been significant. the rain has been significant. we re nowhere near the worst of it, joy. in three, four, five hours, we expect to see really the brunt in this area where this storm surge of about 4 to 6 feet. that is tremendous for this place because of how many areas along the bay that are low lying, which may mean potential for flash flooding, the potential for that surge to come over and cause a whole lot of damage. we re talking millions.
entire day. here in naples we have the back end of it. there s 1.3 million people reportedly out of power in florida. that number is going up by the minute. and remember, this storm is now moving northeast very, very slowly. the rain is being dumped, the ground is being softened, the trees are falling, more power lines are going down. so they re not even going to get started on fixing that power until at least tomorrow in places like this when the wind dies down. it s still very windy here. the water has got to recede and they got to get cars out of the street and then they start working. we heard emergency calls from people who are trapped. lee county, ft. myers, they ve redirected some of their emergency calls here so the police here are saying please don t call us unless you actually have an emergency. we can t do anything for you. we re trying to help those meme in ft. myers where things are
hurricane makes a difference, because you have some that are really super slow. this seems like a super slow one, and then you have others that whip through really quickly. exactly. one that comes told that was extremely slow was harvey. you remember the visuals from that. for this one, we re moving right now to the northeast at 8 mles per hour. it has has a chance to slow down. once we see a hurricane getting to 3 to 4 miles per hour, that s usually the average walking speed of a human. this is going to meander and take its time, and this is going to dump copious amounts of rain through central florida. possibly 2 feet in some areas. like you said, that s the next tier of the storm. there s lots of components to a hurricane, the wind, the tornadoes ahead of it, and then we have the soaking rain. this is just all-encompassing. really much of the state of florida is being impacted by this hurricane at this point. yeah, it s pretty much a statewide hurricane. look how big it is as we
fields keep flooding, people are going to move. that s the major cause for migration around the world and here in america. it is really hard to live in places that get hit by tornadoes and get hit by hurricanes on an ongoing basis. you can t make a living out of it. that s a really important and necessary consideration. i got to have you come back because we could do a whole hour on where people with money choose to live because they live in low places. it s a whole other topic. stay safe, my friend. you re brilliant. thank you very much, ali velshi. appreciate you alyssa basher is in tampa. elson, it s quiet. i don t hear rushing wind, but how are things there because i don t hear rain? there s definitely a steady flow of rain. louise this fluctuation in the last couple of hours where sounds like the wind was a lot more intense, maybe an hour or two ago. right now you can see there s rain, but nothing too crazy. we did just in the last 40 minutes or so hear and see a
bay to go sight-see and look where the tide has receded and they re saying that s incredibly dangerous because they re still expecting significant storm surge here. it s so ill-advised. if you get in trouble, that means somebody has to risk their life to rescue you. please don t do that. this is not a tourist thing. this is dangerous stuff. weather is dangerous. nbc elson basher, thank you so much. let s bring in jesse kirsch in orlando. you are aware of where the storm is headed. what is happening where you are. reporter: a perfectly timed wind gust coming through right now, joy. we got what is really just stronger bands of wind and rain coming through sporadically. it has definitely deteriorated here throughout the afternoon into the evening. what i want to stress is what you re seeing right now are just the northern bands of ian. we re still hours away from the worst impact of this storm here