the whole storm will play up right along the coast here and then we get up towards tampa here at the top of the screen. let s talk about the speed of this storm and the intensity of the storm. it picked up from what it was doing over the water. i ve been impressed. this was a cat 3 and usually with a cat 3. you can expect gusts of 120. that 142-mile-per-hour wind gusts at the naples airport. that was wow, that would do significant damage to not only trees, but structure snoors the people who say they have these hurricane-proof windows, it s meant to withstand something hitting it at 140 or 150 miles an hour. we re at the top of that. does the fact that it made landfall at marco island, does that mean it will weaken and slow down? it may help lower the winds a little bit. these are some of the tide gauges and we ll be updating these. this is st. petersburg toward the clearwater beach area.
days. bill nelson. bonita springs is probably right now at the eye wall. fort myers is the next population center above it. so kristin dahlgren there, look at her. she is blowing away, kristin. you re langing hanging on there looks like you re getting some guests. we are. we re expecting the eye wall to go right over us and we ll get the break in the center, but not before we get the worst of these winds, just a little bit of calm. i ll take you back here and show you what s going on here and we re obviously in a parking lot here. we ve been behind a big concrete building trying to stay safe, but take a look at how many branches are down here and this is a protected area. this was our fallback plan. so we re not out on the beach or anything where they re getting the worst of it. so this is a powerful storm coming through. the roar as these winds come through is absolutely incredible, and then we re expecting it to get worse and worse through the next few minutes and maybe within the
low water and with in the half an hour, the water has gone up five and a half feet in one hour. here is the center of the storm right now. it s located now just north of naples. bonita springs. i feel for you. you are in the heart and the worst of the band right now, but the story that s developing is the winds on the back side is piling like this and that s piling the water into southwest florida and from the marco island area to napel, the wind will continue onshore and the water will pile up and it s not going to be able to escape and that will get higher and higher and that s why they re saying 10 to 15 feet of storm surge and that s why there is a flash flood emergency in that area because they re afraid of people that maybe stayed or think the water is really low. there are people that we know we talked to some of the mayors in this area and we know people stayed in areas that were in evacuation areas. imagine being in your house and the water has been gone all day lo
you have high tide. we passed high tide there and area water levels have increased and your storm will start again fairly shortly. so this picture of chris hayes that the country is seeing will be short lived, but enjoy it while you have it, chris. i ll be back to you in a little while. let s go to randall henderson in naples. this is headed north from napels to fort myers where we have a similar problem there in that it s going to start to seem a little more relaxed and then that storm surge is going to come in. randall henderson, what s the situation in fort meyers as you know it to be right now? it is definitely in full mode right now. i can share with you that the caloosahatchee river has diminished to the gulf of mexico. we are laser focused as you have been talking about with the backlash of the surge that will whiplash back up to us. we re encouraged that the storm
if anyone has been near an undertow, you know the power of water. if you felt like your feet would be pull out from under you, that s exactly what we re talking about the are being pulled out from under you. right here in miami what you re seeing right now in this area is still a little surprising to me. it is testament to how big this storm really is. we have had a little bit of a break in the back behind the storm. we would have expected that the winds would have died down quite a bit and the rain would have let up a little bit here. as this storm continues to drive up the west coast. but as big, as huge as that circulation is, we still have not quite switched over. we ve been doing a battle between winds but we have not switched over to getting those winds back from the west yet. because we re watching our friends, the palm trees here. and whichever direction they go, we know what that wind is doing. so that s still very surprising to me. remember, just a quick recap here.