everyone. it is tuesday, april 25th. welcome to cnn this morning. we re so glad you re with us. we do begin, though, with news about this show. as you may have heard yesterday, cnn parted ways with anchor don lemon. a statement, chris licht thanked don for his contributions over the 17 years. writing in part, don will forever be a part of the cnn family. we wish him well and will be cheering him on in his future ende endeavors. he was one of the first anchors to have me on his show. that s something i ll obviously never forget. we wish him the best. we certainly do. don was one of my first friends at cnn. i m so thankful to worked alongside him and for his support for nearly 15 years here and i wish him all good things ahead. we re really proud of this show. we re so proud of the dedicated team that works around the clock to bring you the news every morning and our priority is you, the viewer. we re grateful you welcome us into your home each morning. absolutely. of c
trajectory and track. the flow is offshore, wind is blowing toward gulf of mexico at the moment, however, the center will approach this area in the next hour to hour and a half and winds will switch around and we ll have to watch for major water push that will come inland. we have not seen much in the way of people in thisirria, a great thing. we were here yesterday talking to residents and taylor county deputy. there is mandatory evacuation in effect with this category 4 approaching. looks like most people took the warning seriously. todd: the word unprecedented keeps popping up, how does this storm compare to others you have covered? this is different because of
flood inundation maps. we re looking yellow into green for expected water push all the way into our communities along the coastline, yankee town and cedar keys. so even though the storm has passed and the winds are beginning to subside, the worst is not over. we re counting to shelter in place, emergency operations have not yet resumed, so as soon as the wind speed comes down a little bit more, and we can get our emergency crews out there, we ll begin our recovery process. and sir, there s been the latest numbers are about 54,000 households that are without power, more than 100,000 households have seen their power brought back online just in the last ten hours alone. so is there power to most of these communities? and i m just wondering as this water continues to grow, are you in a position now to be able to go and maybe find people that are trapped?
are getting closer to sunrise. actually behind the camera. and this will give us light of day of really the most quiet weather that we will see for the next 24 hours. i mean, the outer rain bands are going to hit this afternoon. and anyone in the state of florida, when they go to bed tonight, that s where they are going to ride out this storm. this has the potential of being historic storm for the state of florida. in fact, there has never been a category 4 hurricane to hit the big bend of florida and although right now the official forecast is calling for cat 3, it s not out of the question that this could be a stronger storms, with the landfall across the big bend of florida closer to cedar key, unfortunately that is worst case scenario for tampa bay where i am. that means we will have the optimal approach for storm surge. and for tampa bay, it s really like a baseball mitt. all that water push into the baseball mat is going to be stacking up on the ground. we could see 7 feet of sto
and this white line right here, i m actually drawing a blue line over it, but this is the mississippi river valley. any water droplet that melts from the snow pack here is going to eventually filter into the mississippi river. that is going to allow for this slow-moving disaster to continue to build further and further south as it continues to see that water push into places like lac lacrosse, wisconsin. we have over 400 miles of flood warnings from the mississippi further south ward and see the purple dots starting to expand in coverage later into the weekend. places like musca teen, iowa, expected to crest with some of the worst flooding they have seen in decades. thank you. keep a close eye on it thinking about folks there. derek, thanks. also this morning, tucker carlson s tenure at fox news has come to an abrupt end. we ll talk about his influence next. my life. it s all natural.