40-mile-per-hour winds. we have a 40% chance at 47-mile-per-hour winds. we are going to get a tremendous amount of wind from this. we are a heavily forested city. we love our tree canopy, but we haven t had a storm like this in my lifetime. it has been more than 100 years since we had this kind of storm pointed right at us. and our tree canopy has not been sort of cleared out by storms in recent years. so we should i urge everyone in our city to take this very, very seriously. the winds, the potential flooding from the rain and we also expect 6 inches of rain in a short period of time. and we expect that rivers and creeks will swell with that rain and then potentially flood. so we know that following the storm, there is always potential for tornadoes. i want everybody to be concerned
pre-position our incident management teams search and rescue teams and equipment, communications equipment as well as supplies for mass care to be used for those sheltering out of the storm s poath. in addition we ll deploy recovery experts to assist the areas impacted by the storm. and i always feel for your teams after the storms hit. when you do rescues oftentimes where people stay, they did not heed evacuation orders. do you have a sense of how many folks are listening to the evacuation orders along the coastline? you re right, the most critical point right now is for people to listen to local officials who are issuing evacuation guidance. we they that there are several counties under mandatory evacuation and others who are under voluntary evacuation and the most critical thing whether you ve lived in florida whour your whole life and weathered storms or your first time going through this, but listen to the
path of the storm. reporter: and because of this forecasted path, we expect all of this water to just come into the tampa bay area which again the concern is that it will lead to a good amount of flooding, we re told at least 60,000 sandbags have been distributed in pinellas county. and clearwater where you are, peak storm conditions expected i think around midnight tonight, is that right? tell us what you are expecting there. reporter: we already had our first kind of initial impacts from the storm, right? we had the outer rain bands impacting us about an hour ago, we got a brief gust of wind about 40 miles per hour, heavy downpours of rain and then it came to an end. that is what we should expect to see gradually increase before conditions completely
county. we re told those can house up to 20,000 people. so right now emergency officials are trying to get folks that live in this part of hillsborough county, which is pretty low lying a low lying area. they are trying to get them out of their apartments and condos and homes and trying to get them to hire ground. t flooding concern is not just in the tampa bay area.ground. flooding concern is not just in the tampa bay area. governor desantis talked about some of the flooding that we ll see in a lot of inland counties up and down the western coast from the big bend all the way down here to tampa bay. here is a bit of what he said earlier today. this storm is going to impact inland counties. and particularly in northern florida, you are going to see significant impacts. by the path it doesn t just mean in the cone because there is going to be impacts that will be outside whatever the national hurricane center says is the
floridians are getting their first taste of hurricane idalia s strength. it is only the beginning. squalls are beginning to crash ashore in southern florida. the storm s worst expected hours away from now. joining us now, jeremy greenberg, director of operations for fema s response director. thanks for taking the time this afternoon. thank you for having me on. as you see this coming, there is a lot of talk of historic, historic storm surge, particularly in the area where it is expected to hit most in the big bend there. does fema have in place what it needs to respond to what this storm is predicted to look like? fema along with other federal partners have been working with the state of florida for the past several days to