back to our top story, hurricane idalia barreling down on flory florida projected to be a category 4 by landfall. that could be sometime in the next few hours. that s a powerful hurricane. meaning it is both the wind and a water event. we will keep our eye on that. box weather correspondent nicole valdes is live in tampa with the latest on the conditions there. how does it look? trace, a lot of wind and rain already. this is just the beginning. the storm surge threat is still top of mind for tampa bay officials. as i show you the tempo riverwalk you notice we are starting to see some standing water form on the low lying areas. we are in a zone a evacuation area. harbour island and davis island just beside me here have already been evacuated.
million dollar townhome offer. you can literally identify which were the house that is were build up to the modern code and which one were pre-existing and how they withstood the wind. the water event is a different dynamic. there s only so much you can do. but when you re talking about 7, 8 feet of storm surge. it s tough to build against that. and especially in the gulf of mexico. we have very i m not a marine geologist, but i know there s a low shelf there. so the water piles up much faster and then you ve got the inland flooding too. you ve got significant rain events. so it s changing the character of these communities. you ll see that increasingly in fort myers beach as a result of last year s storm. senator marco rubio, we appreciate your time. thanks very much. all right. be safe. thank you. all right. that was senator marco rubio down in miami. miami has seen its share of
enough for fish to be swimming around in it. but this is still a water event happening here. the surge is coming and the next few hours, the highest tide is going to happen here and that s when you re going to see a heck of a lot more water and it s going to become much more dangerous to traverse. i love the way you described the fact that there are fish in the water. they are not supposed to be there where you just showed us. thank you so much for your work out there. it has just been incredible to see. we know tens of thousands of floridians are without power at this moment and so even as the category has weakened, that does not mean the danger has subsided. there s a lot more to come here. no question about that. while the hurricane is sitting coastal areas where historic storm surge, it s also lashing inland cities with heavy rain and powerful wind. we re going to speak with the mayor of lake city florida where the hurricane is passing as we speak. you ve changed. so have we.
on the road, it s time to get out. it s just not safe. yeah, in these situations, both for hannah and michael, we ve covered these for many, many years. it s a water event. the wind is something in a category three. this is water. this is water pushing up. you just cannot get away from the water. michael, do you have a plan b in case the water gets higher than you anticipate? i do. there are certain checkpoints at which i ll leave. i m set up high on a hill. the church is high on a hill. you re right. we ve never had the amount of water and storm surge that is predicted for this storm. the even great cedar key hurricane of 1896 is half of what is predicted for today. and i live 1 1/2 blocks from the water on either side. the water is the deadly concern here. i promise, at some point, we ll high-tail it out of here. i believe i have a good plan in place to stay and help the folks
for this volume of rainwater? you are absolutely correct. it was just a few months ago that a number of the hillside communities that were slides, homes that fell into, you know, the water. so, we are still overcoming that. in those hillsides where there were slides in january, they are still at risk. so, this is a big problem for us. and chief, what preparations has your department made in the event that you have to do rescues? right. we lean forward and plan. this is a very unique situation where this water event, this weather event, we knew was going versus the earthquake that just happened a half-hour ago. so, we are preplanning it is in place. staffed up our apparatus, we feel confident we have the right amount of resources to address the issues and keep the