we had some of the strongest winds here so far. good evening, once again, i am stephanie ruhle. we are continuing live coverage of hurricane in, the category four storm made landfall on florida s west coast this afternoon, and it is still battering the state with heavy rain and hurricane-force winds. right now, more than 2 million homes and businesses in the state of florida are without power. let s get right to nbc meteorologist michelle grossman for the latest. michelle, i know you just got the 11 pm update for the national hurricane center. what have you learned? i will look at it with you, because it s right at the presses. we re still looking at a strong storm. we re looking at heavy rainfall, gusty winds, and we will look at what we are seeing in terms of wednesday, because we are holding on to the strength. let s hold back for a second because you saw wind speeds up to 135 miles per hour. this was a historical storm, if it is the big historical, catastrophic. we ll
having to deal with that. they re putting out the signal, don t call for 9-1-1 unless you really need it. don t go out on the street and start to explore. that s where it goes at this point. by morning, i think it would have been done with this wind. however, one thing that changed here is that 3:20 this afternoon is when the low tide was in place. about 2 am this morning, it will be high tide again, which is part of what might be impeding the ability for these roads to completely drain. this would be another rough night, even in a pulse. of course, as michelle said four people elsewhere in florida, they have not even seen the beginning of some of the storm that they will get. stuff? rather, where are you sleeping tonight? this place, this is a hotel. it s got rooms on higher force, so there s no power, but we have beds. no power but hopefully you had power bars with you. do you feel safe? ali, you have covered every natural disaster i can think of
for the last couple of hours. these were honestly parked in rose on the let down right, and now they are off-loading freely. ali, you and i spoke a few minutes ago. it s quiet where you are, the storm has passed you, but where do you go from here? what s happening in the committee now and when the sun comes up tomorrow? well, a lot of power outages, there s no power. you can see there are no lights on around here. that is not getting solved. the winds will die down. there are 94 miles per hour. it s about work guys on cherry picker trucks can start fixing wires. that has not started. that might happen tomorrow. collier county, where naples is, just put a request for people to not be on the roads. they are saying have the roots in the county are still underwater, so despite the fact behind me, it looks like all the water is gone, it has not drained from everywhere. that remains a problem. by the way, there is nothing but debris underneath here, that makes it interest drive. what pol
in the last ten years. compare today to what you have seen before. there was a lot of all today. including my team, we all covered a lot of hurricanes. there was a lot of awe in the power of the water and what it did and being able to visualize the way it came in and what a storm surge looks like in realtime and lifting those cars and moving them, things like this, and 11,000 pound vehicle, just bobbing around. it was one of those weather is an amazing thing, and they can be really destructive. we need to understand it better. it was quite something to watch. i want to show on a screen right now, ali, some images from the flooding in st. augustine earlier before i let you go, there you have these are live images filling the streets. when salt water gets into the foundation of buildings, what does it do? rest, that s one of the main
coming off, trees coming down with the ground being so wet. what we do with a flash flood warning, that is dangerous. remember with hurricane, water kills the most people in hurricane, whether freshwater from the sky or salt water from the ocean from the storm search. this is something that takes very seriously. we will be talking about it today, also friday into saturday, a flash flood emergency. we don t see that often, that include sebring, also arcadia, heavy rain falling, need to get to the highest level of your house if you can. we are seeing roads turning into rivers. we already see that with ali out and about and we will continue to see the. stephanie? we will go see ali right now, michelle, thank you. i want to turn to my very dear friend here and be msnbc, ali velshi. ali, i want you to know that this morning before i knew that you were officially down there in florida, i was at mass with my daughter, i thought the in my bones. we prayed for you. my mother louise prayed f