we need help. that s all i can say. that s it. we know from we ve been seeing and hearing that this one will be will require the help of all persons. we will need the world to help us with this one. according to a spokesman from the red cross, about 45%, nearly half of the homes on the hardest hit islands are likely to be damaged or destroyed. amid all of this, and as the storm bears down on the united states, president trump today showcased a doctored image, what appeared to be a doctored image of the region affected by the storm. the president s map appeared to be edited by hand with a sharpie marker, falsely indicating the storm would impact or could impact alabama. that is a claim that the national weather service has already denied. we will get to that shortly. but first, the storm itself. msnbc s ali velshi is in charleston, south carolina.
and destroying homes in the bahamas. roofs are torn off. cars flipped over. this is just on the outer islands of the bahamas. the full force of the hurricane has not yet reached the big population centers. nassau and freeport. we are hearing about widespread power outages and that the government has disconnected the public water service as this storm bears down. let s go to our severe weather center. the power of the storm is compounded by how slow it s moving. right? i m at a loss for words when we think about what they are going through. very few people who have ever lived on our planet are going through the horrifying conditions of these family members huddled in their homes in the dark of night without power and they are putting up with wind gusts equivalent to an
this storm bears down. what s the very latest you re seeing on the forecast? we re just getting some data from the air force hurricane hunter aircraft flying through the storm. once we get a full set of data we ll have another update at 2:00 on exactly how strong dorian is. there s been some changes in the structure of the storm since last night but this is the first aircraft we ve had in the air for some time so we ll get a really good estimate of how strong it is. right now the key thing to remember about dorian, it s a very powerful, major hurricane. grand bahama is still experiencing the eye wall and will many more hours. the storm is actually growing in size as we see today and that will expose more people along the florida east coast to dangerous conditions, winds and storm surge. reporter: there have been some signs of that northward movement of the storm, but even as that happens, the storm is getting bigger in size. what might that mean for the people in florida?
for high winds and storm surge, some rain, and they can t take this lightly even though it looks like it s treating us nicely. and this is nicely. yeah. this is nice. i do want to point out, again, the storm surge as you can see the surf kicking up here, this is heading out towards low tide. the storm surge at 7 feet including the water up over the dunes, absolutely. that would mean that some houses would have damage. a lot of sand will be pushed on the road. and the hurricanes of 2004 was interrupted and almost created a new inlet. so it can do some damage. again, ken graham at the hurricane center was saying we can expect hurricane forced winds here along the coast. and in ft. pierce. what do your residents need to know as the storm bears down and is hitting. people that decided to ride out the storm, what do they do?
bring a potentially life-threatening storm surge, heavy rain, and devastating winds. expected to make landfall as a powerful category 4 store monday or tuesday. you are looking at a live shot right now in delray beach in south florida where some sunbathers are still soaking up the rays as the storm bears down. chief meteorologist rick reichmuth is checking dorian s path from the fox news extreme weather center. rick, what should we be expecting here? hey, lisa pair looks like a nice day right now across the beaches of florida. there will be the case probably by saturday even though we will be watching this store make landfall sometime probably around tuesday. this is the latest, as of about 11:00 this morning, the satellite image starting to show this really well-defined i. that certainly would be an indication that it s going to have the ability to strengthen quite a bit. probably very quickly. yesterday, for most of the day and overnight, the southwestern side of the storm wasn t r