Breaking news and good evening. I'm erin burnett outfront tonight. The breaking news unsurvivable. That is the exact word officials are using right now, as hurricane helene has now grown to an extremely dangerous category four hurricane, bringing with it potentially really historic storm surge levels right now expected at 20 feet. Let's just look at the scene right now is a live camera that we have in met lots of florida trees right there right now, you've got up to 130 an hour gusts coming through that area on that bridge. We have seen cars coming and going really even in these past few moments, which is pretty stunning. Many bridges have already been closed. This is the skyway bridge, as you're looking here, which is now completely submerged. Imagine being in one of those cars. And right now, darkness is descending on the area more than 200,000 people in the dark without power right now, there is a sheriff asking people who do not evacuate to write their name and date of birth on their arms or legs so they can be identified. And that the storm is hitting on precedent and warm waters. And that's what's really like this highoctane jet fuel as they're calling it, with the storm intensifying and speeding up so rapidly right now, we do expect 60 million people across 12 us states to feel the effects of helene over these next hours and days it is now one of the largest storms to go to the gulf of mexico in the last century. This image is that storm from the international space station and of course, the larger the store in the more catastrophic the damage when you add up the wind and the flooding and the rain we do have some new pictures from inside the storm as it's rapidly intensifying this from one of the hurricane hunter aircraft, as you can see in part of the viewfinder there. And the florida capital tallahassee bracing for what they're calling a dead on him tallahassee. In fact, this is an interesting thing, least in known history, has never faced sustained hurricane force wind and that of course has officials fearing complete destruction in this moment, thousands of trees could come down massive power outages just an absolutely chaotic and horrific scene possible in tallahassee. And there are new warnings tonight across all of the south tennessee, georgia, the carolinas. All right. Now, preparing for lifethreatening flash floods in georgia people being told to stay off the roads in asheville, north carolina. 100 miles inland evacuations are already underway. They are being told that they will be seeing one of the most significant weather events to happen in the modern era. We do have reporters across florida tonight. Chad myers also standing by with latest forecast as the storm is about to formally hit near tallahassee. I want to start with derek van dam joining me now though from apalachicola on the florida panhandle. And hurricane helene, derek heading your way going to be a waiving as i said, the formal arrival sun what are you seeing? what do you expect? well, this area in particular is bracing for what could be the most powerful land falling hurricane in big bend history. And that's really saying something because i often refer to this as the catcher's mitt of hurricanes. If you just look at the tobogo fee this thing is just primed for hurricanes to just move in and it's so vulnerable as well. I was trying to think of ways to encapsulate for our viewers the what we're experiencing here on the ground, the familiar sights, the familiar sounds we're hearing this kind of ai howell almost a roar every once in a while. These worlds of wind come sweeping by associated with some of the heavier rain bands, we get pelted in the face with some of these stronger gusts and the rain bands that feel like almost like a power washer comes through. I walked out our front door and got instantly bombarded with a gust that almost took me off of my feet. And then obviously the flooding waters that are starting to pile up overtake the sewage systems and the drainage systems here. And then the familiar sights of the rocking trees and even though the signs that sun will be come, the potential for missiles as wins here could top 75 miles per hour quite easily. We have so many threats associated with this storm in apalachicola, which were in franklin county and you could see most people have heated the evacuation warnings. We've got empty streets, but still have power for now. We're going to take advantage of that as we can but we've had spin up tornadoes that have made their way on shore. We have the storm surge component to this storm that will make landfall just to our east that catastrophic winds and hey, erin, there are so many trees in and around this part of the big bend and into the florida panhandle with the wind and the saturated ground, these things are going to topple over. It's going to take down power, it's going to take, it's going to land on cars and homes. This is going to be very difficult night and it doesn't stop here. We know that these hurricane force winds are going to extend far inland and that's really our greatest concern is just how impactful this will be for so many more people than just the coast. We know it's strengthened we know it continues to deepen and if we just look at some of the drone videos, that video that we sent up about an hour ago. There's just a marked difference in the conditions that we experienced only one hour ago from our drone operator and photojournalists here to what we're experiencing seeing now, skies have become dark, the wind has picked up and the conditions have gone downhill in deteriorated. So we think that will only multiply exponentially it's the storm approaches the coastline where we are. All right. Well, thank you very much, derek. We're going to be checking in with you. Of course, over these next moments when you talk about how quickly things are changing. And also of course, all of this happening in darkness in the night. In terms of the time that the storm is striking, carlos suarez is joining me now on the phone. He's been in both port which is just a southwest of tampa tonight and carlos i want you to know you've had to move locations because of flooding coming up and a very rapid deterioration that you were witnessing where you were before. So what how fast how has it changed? well, erin, to kind of give you a sense of exactly where we were. We were in pinellas county, as you mentioned, that for the southwest of the tampa bay area, in part that we've been the last couple of years for a couple of other hurricanes because we knew that that area is a lowlying area. We knew in the past to hurricanes that we've covered there, that that was an area that would flip but when we got here this morning, what was interesting is there was already flooding, right? and of course the storm at that time was way off the coast of florida, is nowhere near southwest florida, but we knew that some of the rain that had fallen overnight along with some of the high tide that this was going to be a little bit different than the previous storms that we've covered probably around two or 3:00 in the afternoon as that hurricane got a little bit closer to the north of southwest florida from fort myers and naples and got just to the southwest of us, you really started to see those strong winds pick up. You started to see the rainfall and then all of a sudden in a matter of just i'd say maybe hour or to the water from the bay which has been slowly trickling over and breaching the seawall. There it just started to completely flood the area and we really had to move a few blocks to the north in order for us to be a little bit safer from where we were at the time. And now we've made the decision to go ahead and pull back okay. We're trying to get somewhere safer within pinellas county. And that's because several of the bridges that connect pinellas county to the south and braden ten and manatee county as well as some of the bridges that connect out to the hillsborough, which is tampa in the tampa bay area? those bridges have closed because the sustained winds at one point or another have reached 60 miles an hour and so right now we're in the process of just trying to find a safe place where we can join some of the cnn programming all right please stay safe and we will be checking in with you, carlos. As you find another location there and hopefully are able to circle up with some others that are there. And that just shows exactly the difficulty of covering these storms to try to bring people exactly what is happening, but also to be able to move yourself again it's a storm that has been labeled on survivable. Chad myers is outfront in the cnn weather center chad unsurvivable is the word that were being told so when exactly does the storm formally hit as far as you see it? and obviously from what we're seeing on the images, what our reporters are experiencing on the ground the concept of formally hitting is also with a storm, this large kind of hard to define it is because it hits in a ramped up kind of way for this water, there's not going to be some 20 foot wave that comes over and joe into steen hatchie, even though the numbers say there there will be a surge of 15 to 20, that's not how it works. It just goes up six inches and then ten more minutes and other six inches. And it kind of creeps anya. And that's why we have to get our reporters out of there before that creep gets too much. And then you can't move anywhere because you've already fallen back as far as you can. So the winds right now are 130 now it's per hour. We know that because the hurricane hunter aircraft are flying through it, there, flying through it over waters that are about 85 degrees. The storm is still intensifying. It still could get to 135. It has six more hours before landfall, but between now and then, that's when this six inch one foot, two foot creep is going to be all the way through the big bend here. And so yes, we're not really going to see that big wave of wall of water, but it's going to be an eventual push, push, push and then divided katrina base st. Louis had a storm surge of about 34 to 36 feet. So this happens this happens when you have a catcher's mitt like this or bay st. Louis like this because there's no place for that water to go. Right? it just has to go inland. And the inland goes up. And so the water goes up. The in survivable part of it was that you you're standing on the ground and you're you're six feet tall and the water is 14 feet over your head. I mean, that's that's where that number that word came from. Right. So that's just the case. We are seeing those so much rainfall. There's ran like you said, in asheville, were flood warnings are going on hundreds of miles away from where this storm will be making landfall and then we're going to see, because of a front and because of the moisture from helene almost 20 inches of rain in that little town and say, really, really it's something that these no place can withstand in such a short period of time. So chad, you know, we hear about the largest storm in modern time. You hear about the first directed on tallahassee in that anybody knows, i've ever occurring. You hear about an unsurvivable storm, how bad do you think it will get i think nearly 100% of tallahassee will be without power i really do. I don't think because of the way the live oaks are structured in the taller oaks are there and the pines are there they're going to come crashing down because they have all these weak spots that haven't been tested. It's the weak link. It isn't the whole tree even, but it's that one branch that comes down and hits the power line. And all of a sudden, you spark and lose thousand people and then spark and lose another thousand people. What i did today, and i know there's so many other things. Charge your phone. What i did today, i loaded my freezer with bottles of water because if my power goes out, even here in georgia, i can use that frozen water, shove it in the refrigerator and hopefully keep my fridge cool for at least a couple of extra hours do that now, do those things while you still have power, you got to think about them, but there are still things you can do to help yourself out if you're going to close your garage door and you're going to have wing into at make sure there's nothing that can push that garage door into the garage, push something up there. Could be your car. You don't try to get the car scratched, but that whole thing pushes and then you lose your house because you lost your garage door alright. Well, chad, thank you very much. And we'll be checking in with chad here as we get these updates are coming out from the weather center from noaa. Thank you, chad and let's go now to the mayor of tallahassee, john daly and mayor, i appreciate your time. Chad was just saying he expects nearly 100% of tallahassee to lose power, which in and of itself the via catastrophic lifethreatening event in a storm, officials have dubbed unsurvivable. First, they say dead hit on tallahassee, expected in known history how bad do you think this will be there? well, no doubt if we have a direct hit with a category four hurricane, it will be the most powerful storm ever to hit the city of tallahassee see in written history, that is undisputable. Now, having said that though, we have prepared and we are prepared for the past week, the city has an institution have been working with the white house, with the governor's office, with the county, with the school board to make sure that we have the necessary assets here. We have them spread out all over the county. We have our personnel in place as well we've called in our mutual aid agreements from all over the united states, nine states far away as oklahoma city, an electric utility crews to help us out. So we have tripled our workforce prior to the storm when we expect to increase our workforce to five times the normal workforce after the storm recovery the residents of tallahassee have been preparing all week as well. We are a college town these did a great job with evacuating the students. Now's the time to see what mother nature is going to bring us. The mirror. I understand the evacuation order and leon county was to residents living in mobile and manufactured home. So it was specifically to them because tallahassee is 45 to 50 feet above sea level obviously, the storm surge that we've been told as 20 feet, are you confident in the storm track and in the science behind that decision to only evacuate by mandate, those individuals i do tallahassee is about 30 miles inland, so while my thoughts and prayers are with our neighboring communities on the coast with the storm surge that they will experience. Our greatest concern is obviously the wind effect. And also the rain effect talking about rain, we are above average bridge with our normal rainfall the ground is saturated, more rain comes, is going to loosen the trees as you know tallahassee is internationally known for our beauty in our live oak trees and that helps bring trees down. But when you have category four sustained winds, yes. You're going to have significant damage to the electrical grid two structures here in town, and it's important that we speak the truth to the residence we must take this extremely serious. Now, again, having said that, we are the number one public utility in the nation, we've called in our friends to help us out. Yes, we will be ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work right. Well, mayor daley i appreciate your time. And i'm sure your residents appreciate your attitude about all of this as well. Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate it and i want to go now straight to st. Marks, which is just south of tallahassee. That's where veteran storm chaser, mike boylan is. He has been intent of the biggest name storms and many others. And he runs the popular mike's weather page. Which is a hurricane tracking website. So mike, thank you very much. I appreciate your time so the storm here that as we understand it from where you're standing south of tallahassee, what do you expect to happen there when you hear the mayor talking about well, they feel like they're a little bit inland and therefore that 20 feet of storm surge doesn't directly come to tallahassee i'm going to really beautiful little town here to talk to a bunch of the locals that live here. Really community feeling, location and they're all kind of kinda cautiously scared. Nobody's ever seen this storm surge prediction in this area. So there's definitely a lot of tension where i'm at and you're calling for 20foot of surge in the storm striping. And as you guys have mentioned, so hi just can't, imagine 20 feet of storm surge you know, looking at some of these buildings around here, what that what that could possibly look like. Mike, are you worried that people who should have laughed have not? 100%. I was talking to local sheriff and they are concerned there's some locals that are kind of stubborn a little bit and they haven't evacuated and i know taylor county had a pretty bold statement on on x. I read them. There are concerns with locals that you know, don't take this serious. I mean, i know living in florida my whole life floridians get these storms. They don't believe him. They think they're going to turn, they think it's hype but this one is not height folks. I mean, we're talking at strengthening system at landfall and it is huge. I mean, people compare charlie to e and that was her decision to stay because they, you know, charlie was a tiny little sworn that thing is so big, it's gonna be pushing so much water and i think a lot of folks are gonna be caught off guard well, i mean, that i think is frightening for anybody listening given what they've said about it being unsurvivable, if you are near that storm surge, i know that you've been around florida today. We've got some of the video that you filmed at memorial park. That's in jacksonville. And you also shared what you saw in tampa bay near safety harbor, and then you also took pictures of trees already down in oldsmar, florida now, back to what i mentioned before you're one of the people who really understands what a storm can be because you directly been in the path of ten of the biggest storms. So when you look at what you saw already today hours before we're still seven hours away before what will be called a formal landfall. What does it all signal to you? well the sheer size and the effects outside of that cone. So, you know, a lot of folks still focusing on that speck cone is the impact area. And this is impacting people all the way atlanta, georgia, is going to have hurricane force winds. So i think it's just showing you the power of the gulf of mexico. We've been talking i'll season about the water temperature has been very warm and it's proving powerful. Storm is going to have farreaching effect since you know, we don't get a lot of these cat 4s and who knows that it's going to go even higher in size is what scares, you know, ian was before we saw what that did and another thing that i'm concerned about is everybody so focused on this center line. I but this system is so big, you know, with eee and we had hurricane winds 80 miles apart. So there's a lot of folks effective, even if tallahassee gets a little the city goes a little bit to the east. But as the mayor said, it's, it's tough they've never for screenings here in i think they're going to be a lot of power problems and trees down. It's going to be a mess so what are you seeing right now in terms of the water levels as they are starting to move definitely, definitely. Definitely seeing waters were up you can kind of see it. It's creeping up. And that's what, that's what problem with surge it comes in so fast usually with these winds and that's what people had caught off guard. Like it's nothing. You know, and then i'll set it comes in sometimes s