It states Hurricane Helene was just upgraded. A powerful category three storm. Its already wreaking havoc on bridges and roadways such as this one youre looking at in Southwest Florida for those in the Big Bend, thats where the Florida Panhandle meets the peninsula. The storms Outer Bands all already have brought extensive flooding. And were told that works is yet to come. Listen to what federal and state officials are saying right now, it looks like its dead on hit to tallahassee. This is an unusually dangerous storm that threatens to bring Heavy Rain and potentially catastrophic flooding. This will be a statewide event. We expect strong winds throughout date with hurricaneforce Winds Wind Gust up to 8,200 miles an hour you just heard from the North Carolina Governor and the Georgia Governor we are standing by to hear from florida governor Ron Desantis in the next hour. And as you heard, it is not just florida in helenes pam, georgia, south carolina, North Carolina, are all all facing
very good tuesday mornm jim and i m poppy harlow. right now hurricane fiona strengthening as it sets its sights on another batch of islands. but as it moves past puerto rico and the dominican republic, the damage is devastating. look at those images. in puerto rico two people are dead this morning after most of the power on the island is out. it could be days before it is restored. we re looking for gasoline, water, ice. all of the supplies necessary for getting through this. we were hoping it wouldn t be so big. but, well, it was bigger than we expected. and you have to make do with what you have. been through this before. rescuers have saved more than a thousand people from the floodwaters. as much as 30 inches of rain fell on the eiisland. that is like two and a half feet. they try to get to people in more hard to reach areas. this comes five years, to the day after hurricane maria made landfall on the u.s. island. many people who lived through that catastrophe fear
and that means roof or no roof left. so we are going to see this continue to gather strength. 140 mile per hour storm by tomorrow and we re still going to see rain showers across parts of puerto rico. the problem with this storm is that it was moving at 8 miles per hour. and that is how you got so much flooding. that is how you got 32 inches of rain in ponce. that is the bottom 10% of how fast storms should be moving away. just didn t want to move away. it just continues to want to rain. a little bit of rain today, maybe an inch or two. but this is now moved away from puerto rico. moving away from the dominican republic. not seeing a lot of rain on the south side of the d.r. but there is the storm right now. not seeing a really defined eye and that is good. that means it is not gaining rapid intensification. but here is what is going to go on. we re going to get a storm surgeon the caicos and move toward the north.
rescue operations underway. this storm downgraded to tropical storm. impact across florida is widespread. it s expected to make landfall north of here in cedar key in the coming hours with sustained winds of about 65 miles per hour. the storm itself is about 50 miles off the coast. so we re not getting hammered by wind. but there is a lot of rain. some areas expected to get up to 8 inches of five foot storm surgeon. schools are closed and government offices are closed people are told not to drive on the roads. some airport are closed there have been no mandatory evacuations but has affected the search for survivors in surfside. more than 30 counties have declared states of emergency and 15,000 people have lost power across the entire state of florida. after it moves across northern florida it heads to georgia likely to cause flooding there, too. guys, back to you. ainsley: thank you, steve. and our senior meteorologist janice dean joins us now with the fox weather center and the latest
i have to tell you, we may not be able to get a live shot from patrick ottman, but if we do, it will be incredible. he will experience the 165-mile-an-hour winds which is where we are right now. gusts to 200. that wind is going to come from the north and then it s going to go calm. you can see the stars in the sky from that center of the eye zero in and then on the back side, 180, 165 at this point-mile-an-hour winds coming from the other direction. so no matter how you slice it with an island, you re going to get a storm surgeon the other side. this is not as populated as freeport is. 20, 25 folks here. there you see the eye wall beginning to approach freeport. that will happen within the next hour or so hopefully because it s moving so slowly that once it does get there, they re going to be in that wind for hours and hours and that is going to be a disaster. some of the pictures we showed you there, by the way, that is going to be nothing compared to i think once we get ariels from