the lightning is. had a wind gust in st. petersburg of 44 miles per hour. already had two tornado warnings because of land falling water spouts near marco island. all the things we talked about earlier, about the big storms to the east on the outer leg there of the storm, but obviously everybody looks at the center of the cone, but there are so many things away, hundreds of miles both ways, there will be power outages from the center of where this cone goes. and the governor was also talking about the storm surge. this is a big storm surge. this is 5 meters high. 15 feet high. so this water is not going to come in like a tsunami. it s going to be wave after wave after wave, each successive wave getting higher. all the way to st. marks, really in the way of the 15 foot potential surge. you need to get out of those areas. i know storm chasers want to be there to see it.
we re told up to 20,000 people can be housed at these locations. right now, at least in this part of downtown tampa bay, what they want is folks that live in the low lying part of the town to go ahead and try to get more inland. jim and brianna? hide from the wind, run from the water. carlos suarez in tampa. thank you so much. so right now, there are some huge concerns about the small island of cedar key there in florida which could take a direct hit and face life-threatening storm surge. here s the deputy director of the national hurricane center with a dire warning for cedar key residents. look at the values up here in the big bend here. 8 to 12 feet along the nature coast and cedar key. cedar key is right smack in the middle of that area. i m especially concerned for them. if you re watching from cedar key, it is imperative that you take this very seriously, and if ordered to evacuate, heed those evacuations immediately. the entire island could be completely cutoff.
about this hurricane that as you can see is just barrelling towards the west coast of florida. one of the things that was really interesting there that the governor is warning about is the potential for as this storm is heading there up into kind of that big bend area, that catcher s mitt we ve heard it referred to, there is a potential for this storm to make a little bit of a left turn and head more towards tallahassee. his point there is that don t think that if you are there in the panhandle, you are there in northern florida that you are out of trouble. he s saying everyone should be prepared in case this storm does make a turn. and he s telling people, look, you should be prepared to lose power. you need to get out of the way of storm surge. you don t have to go far, but far enough away to get out of the storm surge. 10 to 15 feet in some areas. we re talking about a lot of water and that water can be deadly. we have our cnn team tracking
i don t recommend it at all. not with a storm like this. this is time to get away from the water for sure. 125 miles per hour winds right there on the shore. talked about tallahassee. a city that s full of trees. live oaks, pine trees, everything. these trees are going to come down, power lines are going to come down, and i m telling you, the power is going to be out for weeks in some spots because there will be too many trees to get out of the way, too many lines to put back up before you can get that. so prepare almost like camping for the next two weeks in places, if you decide to stay. without power, it really does feel like camping. you kind of cook outside on a charcoal grill. you do all of these things, sometimes without water because the power is out, sometimes the water can be out as well. this is the time to prepare. the models have all really agreed. we talk about that potential turn to the left as the governor talked about or the potential turn to the right. the potential t
flood gates. we re told that can handle a storm surge of up to 15 feet, we re expecting maybe half of that to take place. there are two mandatory evacuation orders that have gone out in this part of the state. over in pinellas county, the st. pete clear water area, there s one mandatory evacuation order there. the other is in hillsboro county, home to the tampa bay area. the city s mayor had a news conference earlier today where she talked about some of these preparations that are now underway. here s a bit of what she said. what we say is you hide from the wind and run from the water. so if you can just go in 10, 20 miles inland where the water won t be an issue, that s what we are advising to all of our residents. and in anticipation of whatever effects come this way, they have opened up hurricane shelters in hillsboro county.