n ordered to evacuate as hurricane rita now is bearing down on the state shr gulf coast in just a moment.t. florida governor rhonda santos will join us first herest with the very latest from thisrs category three storm weather. in meteorologist ian oliver is with us in thisoliver. looks like it s going to be a direct hit right over. looks like somewhereoks li nortr fort myers, right towards tampa. yeah, anywhere from naples. igto the southern part of tampa bay, the mouth of tampa bay: stl still a reasonable scenaril o ao here. this is a monster of a storm, still a category three , as your mentioned,ee max, winds at 120we miles per hour. we actually had this inner eye wall that s been degrading, but there s an outer one that s forming. what that does is it spreads out the wind field overh a much larger area. we ve seen these impacts starttw already. tornado warnings throughouarnint the afternoon and evening across much of south florida. we ve got some active onesh flom right
the intense core. it s about 90 miles off toe weso the west of key west. we recorded there a wind gusts up to seventy one miles per hour. so that s greatly removed fromie that intense inner core. and we rnt ae already up to cloe to hurricane force winds.to this is a powerfulrm storm andta one that s getting larger. and this is the latestte forecat track as per the national c hurricane center, any wobbleen left or right? o it s not if with these impacts, it s who gets the worst ofstor t for storm surge. itit ll be who s ever and on the southern and eastern side of that inner core. the eye ase wall as it movesry r ashore. we re talking about a category four m at storm at landfall atrrow a some point tomorrow afternoon or evening. look at the peak surgeft ort att possible again, right at thahetn landfall point occurring at high tidrom the from the southee part of the ba oy down to naple. some of these areas could see up to 12 feet of surge. and just to put that into perspective, a lot o