thing, the multiple vortex tornado, these very small, mini tornadoes that spin around the main, parent tornado. and the eye sometimes of these strong hurricanes, you can get these mini vortices, and you can get stronger winds as those pass by. it s not a question of we could be looking at that situation there where you get these little spins that spin around the entire eye and create even stronger winds from the ambient winds, i guess, within the eye wall. so it s a very frightening experience because they come up on you really quickly, they produce shepard: live coverage with what looked like a picture in the parking lot. fort myers, of course, north of naples. the storm bearing down on naples now. we think the eye s going to cross over there soon, and we ll get back to our steve harrigan who s on scene. first, let s get to carlos who s riding out the storm near names. where are you and allow are you? good, thanks, shep.
but the as we see some debris fall there. the wind has abated, and the wind has aa baited as well. i m not seeing that clear sky we ve seen in the past when the eye of the storm goes over, shepard. shepard: i m watching it on the radar. the eye is a little shaky, a little wobbly. a straight-up look in just a minute might show something a because the eye of the storm, the eye of hurricane irma is passing over naples and north naples right now. reporter: it s just one more way that these storms can be deceptive, how dramatically they can change from one minute to the next. you can see gusts of up to 100 miles an hour, parts of buildings collapse, large branches blown off, and then a few minutes later we re seeing a light ping of the sky here. but i can t say whether this is the eye or not, shepard. shepard: i can t either. i can just tell you from looking at the radar that naples itself
you. on the right side of the picture, the picture on on the right-hand side of your screen is from marco island police, and it s a picture of debris in the road there. we re waiting for more details. if this is during the eye they went out and took this picture, marco island police. our senior meteorologist janice dean with us again. this eye ought to reach naples pretty quick now. reporter: very quickly. the outer eye wall is now moving into the naples area, and i think we still have steve harrigan s camera up. he should be experiencing the eye, he should or be experiencing the eye very, in the immediate future, probably around 5 p.m. so now he s seeing the worst of the eye wall, which is 115 mile-per-hour sustained winds, certainly 100 mile-per-hour is in the vicinity of what he s experiencing right now. and, certainly, he is going to feel that calm of the eye that moves through the region. and i know he s felt it before. but it s this very calm period
most of those people have left or evacuated. a few stubborn or experienced people deciding to stay here. but right now first responders are not answering the call under these conditions and certainly understandable why not. very dangerous to be out on the road moving arounding under these conditions. but certainly, they will be out perhaps performing water rescues throughout the night if we do get such a storm surge of 10-15 feet, shepard. shepard: steve, did you say it s calmed down just a little bit? because it looks like the eye s very close to you. reporter: it comes and goes, and i think in the last two or three minutes it has calmed down, and now we re seeing the wind abate right now. so what we could be seeing here and i m just speculating, i don t know, and it could certainly kick up again in a minute but we could be seeing the eye of the storm approach naples. i don t know that for certain.
pictures that you re seeing now, the worst of it coming to naples, and shortly they should be in the eye of this storm as this, the storm now has maximum sustained winds of 115 miles an hour. it s a category three storm, so a major storm still. partly over land, the eye is. and northbound through collier county about to make it into and then through naples and headed to fort myers, florida, which is on the southwest florida coast. 115 mile-an-hour maximum sustained winds, forward progress 12 miles an hour, central pressure now 940 millibars. so the central pressure is going up on the scale which is really good news. that means the storm is weakening and continuing to move in a north direction. again, more live pictures coming out of naples, and you can see the sheets of rain just gliding across all of those palm trees. it s great to see we don t see a