a very high level. some are saying it's one of the biggest storms ever to hit our country. it built very rapidly,ed a briefing with secretary of homeland security and the administrator of fema and we are watching hurricane michael. it's just hitting shore now. winds are going up to close to 200 miles an hour. category 4. you don't hear about that. it's the most powerful recorded storm to strike the florida panhandle ever. it will bring with it anywhere from 150 mile to almost 200 mile an hour winds. the storm surges could be up to 15 feet. additional rainfall could also produce flash flooding at the highest levels. we have been in constant communications with governor rick scott of florida. with all the authorities in the various states. we're very well prepared for massive amounts of food and we have first responders all over, the electrical companies are staged and ready to go in after the storm. over a thousands trucks. we have large amounts of food and water and everything else that you need. that will go -- immediately be rushed in as the storm leaves. federal resources are on the ground at every level and we are absolutely ready. it's a top priority and these top priority is this. we have moved a lot of people off the area and out of path of the storm but people remain. some people don't want to go. the winds will be so tremendous. this will be a lot of water but will be tremendous wind and lot of those houses aren't built for winds like that. haven't seen winds like that. florida and georgia will braer the brunt of the storm. however, hurricane michael as it's called is expected to bring very, very considerable rainfall to north and south carolina. i just left there and they had tremendous storm as you know. florence and that was a heavy water storm. more so than the wind and now north carolina and south carolina will be getting additional water. it's a tough situation. we're with them. we're with georgia. we're with florida. we're with alabama. everything that will be hit, we have covered. i just say god bless everyone because it's going to be a rough one. it's going be a very dangerous one. my administration will continue to provide updates and information as it becomes available. >> that is president trump speaking at the white house about hurricane michael. now a category 4. just a hair away from category 5. this is serious business. >> we talked to you as the eye passed by you. it skirted by you. it didn't get to you. what's the situation now? >> reporter: it's just non-stop. there was reported wind gusts of 106 miles an hour. i want my camera man to continue to show you these trees behind me. that's what the roads are looking like. they are getting more and more inundated. we're starting to see more debris and more trees that cannot with stand the strong winds from this historic storm. i'm just a short 15 minute drive from mexico beach from where hurricane michael and made landfa landfall. we drove there today. we were going to be live there. we turned back because we were afraid when the wind gusts reach 45 miles an hour, they close the bridges, so we turned back. yesterday i talked to many locals there in mexico beach. many people did not evacuate. many people will ride out the storm there. making calls to check in on them. they haven't returned my calls. a lot of people really caught off guard by the storm. these are the kind of wind gusts that you get sucked up in and it's very hard to get out of them. port st. joe where i am, mexico beach, some of the hardest hit area. we've been talking to the mayor as well. this is a city of 3,000 people. he said the hospital closed yesterday at 5:00 p.m. there is no shelter at port st. joe. very concerned about the people that did not evacuate. a lot of the folks already losing power. this hotel where we're coming to you live from has already lost power. a lot of locals are saying they are afraid that the landscape in this city and along the panhandle will not look the same after the storm, just short of a cat 5 made landfall. >> it's a lot of trees around you. it's forest and there's a lot of trees and debris. a will the of old houses there. a lot of houses built of wood. a lot of them not built to modern code. back then they built things well so a lot will stand. >> even when this passes, if the nearest hospital is closed, if there's no shelter in port st. joe, those who did remain, are there for the long haul. >> it will be hard to find out what's going on for them. if you look at this radar on your right, what you're seeing is mexico beach which is where they got hit the hardest, where it came ashore is getting the other side of the storm. let's ask bill about this. the thing that people don't realize, if you're close to the center of the hurricane, you get hit twice. >> mexico beach is where the landfall with. that was the worst of the winds so far of what we have heard. you see where the map is. in between port st. joe and then you go to kendall air force base and then you get to panama city. >> it's roughly in between. the worst of the strongest winds were. there's not a meteorologist in the world that can believe what we just witnessed. the 155 miles an hour winds at landfall makes it the fourth strongest land falling with wind speeds and the pressure makes it the third lowest pressure of any storm since records going back to the late 1800s. >> repeat that for us again. to the novice like me when you say low pressure, as soon as i hear low, i think of positive and it's a big negative. >> the lower the pressure -- the winds are creating by the pressure. low pressure and high pressure. the lower the pressure can get, the force can crank up and increase further especially a tight eye like this one. the fact this woone will be compared to andrew, katrina and camille. if you told me that a week ago, i would say you're crazy. i don't want people to think we're all done. the national weather service in tallahassee, this blue box here, this is an excessive wind warning. they are telling everyone in this box that goes from the coast up to i-10, that 130 miles an hour winds get in your safe room, get if your tub. go in an interior closet with your children. it has winds that can gust 120 miles an hour winds. look at the lightning strikes with this still. showing a lot of signs of intensity. the eye itself on satellite, you can see that coming on shore here. the little dark, clear spot here. we're waiting to see how high the winds will get. you seem to think the wind gusts might be for readers. these will change especially in a storm every five to ten minutes. panama city still working at 66. wee talked to one mayor south of tallahassee said the power is already out. then we have to keep saying who's next as we go throughout the day? as we go further north, the storm in about two hours from now across interstate 10, that's when the storm will be as close as it will get to tallahassee and then it will hold. >> kerry sanders is out there in panama city. he can't hear us but i think he's already talking to us as though he can. let's go to kerry. >> that's brutal. that's a good wind. >> kerry may not know he has a hot mic. >> kerry, if you can hear us, let us know what you are going. we were looking at him half an hour ago. can you hear us? >> put this in perspective. now standing out there on the patio of the hotel. >> there was no wind there. he's facing the building at the moment. the building was blocking the wind. that's why the surf didn't look so serious and why it didn't look so serious. he pulled out into an alley where you can see the wind and it was remarkable. now he's in that same spot. >> a baseball helmet. we saw the out door swimming pool. looked like you were looking at the ocean. the wind has changed. >> i'm glad he has that helmet on. the video going around, jim cantore had a two by four that flew maybe 10, 15 feet passed it. if it would have hit him, it would have been ugly. >> reporter: came across about 23 miles. the strongest winds of the hurricane are right next up to the eye wall. the winds have gusted, i would estimate, about 130 some odd miles per hour. one of the interesting things to note is because the eye passed to the east, the wind has been keeping some of the surf that u yo s -- you see behind me offshore. with the movement and circulation of the storm as it moves inland, we're going to see the wind coming from the backside pushing this water up onto the coast here. it's already tremendously high. it's going to come up to the sand dunes and maybe over. that's what leads to storm surge. the storm surge causes so much of destruction and damage. we have seen minor damage. it's very hard in a middle of the hurricane to get out and do much of a survey. the fire department says they have been receiving emergency calls from the residents who decided to stay put. about 24,000 chose to stay on the beach here because they went to bed last night with a category 2 and said we've been through that before. woke up and it was category 4. they started closing the three bridges and people who decided to stay were stuck here and could not leave. the fire department is not going out. there the emergency calls but they're not foigoing out. they say they will respond after the hurricane passes. the chief say it was too many lives in danger for them to go out in this kind of environment. the update is, it's still ongoing. we still a ways to go. the eye wall or the eye has come ashore to the east of us. the wind is blowing. there hopefully is no debris in this area. i'm going to wrap it up. even though we have some protection on my eyes with the helmet, you never know. probably safer the move inland and get up to a building where we have protection. kerry sanders, nbc news for facebook live. >> that's a different situation for kerry than a little while ago. >> just a few minutes ago. >> the speed at which this hurricane is going. we also talk about how slow a hurricane is. this is one of the fast ones. the second thing is in the course of the last couple of days -- >> look at this. this is kerry sanders crew. he was wearing a baseball helmet just a minute ago. >> that's kerry sanders. >> one of the crew members is trying to stabilize kerry and help bring him in. put that in perspective. >> look at that. >> looks like another reporter is taking over for him. this is the back side of the storm. >> what does that mean? >> this is the weaker side of the hurricane. >> what does the front side look like? >> we'll find out tomorrow morning when we get the he helicopters up. >> this is just west of it. >> it's a really rural area. a lot of those mobile homes, small houses will be destroyed. >> let's go to lester holt. he's in panama beach. >> you have the mattress along the wall. >> covering the window. >> we saw the hands of you guy trying to not have that window blowing. >> yeah. we took refuge in here. we came to give people an idea what it looks like out the window. we reached a point it was time to put the mattress in front of the window. the window is cracked. i'm going to try to get the microphone over here. i lost something. lost my phone. i want to let you hear what it sounds like for a second. it's like a jet engine blowing past us. when we had the window open, it was running parallel to us. driving water, standing water, some minor flooding in the parking lot but trees falling down, bending over. very concerned about some of the power lines in this area. hard to know how many people are staying in this hotel. it's a three-story, brick hotel. we chose it because it's place we could shelter. it was a place out of wind we could shelter the satellite truck. we feel safe here. that said, the building have shifted a few times with the stronger gusts. this is the real deal. this is not stand in the teeth and report. this is stay inside your room or the hallway. >> lester, for people who live in the area who did not evacuate who are not in three story brick structures in a rural area where there's a number of mobile homes, what is it like for the structures outside the building where you are? >> reporter: i don't know. we came in here last night. we drove out a couple of hours ago. i needed to shoot an on camera stand up for a "nightly news" story i'm working on. when we left the conditions looked okay. by the time we got to where we wanted to be ten minutes later, it was in the danger zone. i can't imagine if you're not in a modern structure what this would be like. i'm not a hurricane expert. i've never been in one where i felt in imminent danger. this one, i'm going to say it again in is the real deal. these winds are fierce. the gusts to the extent they are moving this build iing -- >> it sounds like we have lost our connection with lester. i want to ask our control room to put up the video we were seeing earlier where they were trying to preserve the shot out that window. we first -- bill -- >> we don't know if that's the same crew? >> that's lester's team. they had this room and a room next to it where they put the mattress in place after you said on air the importance -- one thing that lester said is the window is cracked for equalization. >> the only thing i can guess is if you have driven your car sometimes, one window is open, it makes it a loud annoying noise. if you open another, it equalizes the pressure. for whatever reason when the door was shut, sometimes the glass can vibrate or start bouncing and worried about it cracking. >> not to get too technical but these things are all about differences in wind pressure. the pressure is always trying to meet the other pressure. >> earlier you were with us about two hour s ago, when mariano was opening her door, it was causing other people in the hotel proms. >> we started to see a hand show up. perhaps they can trying to secure it and shortly we had two grown men sprawled over. >> i'm sure they are watching it. it's hard to tell from our angle but they were watching it flexing. they probably saw the metal. >> a window can just pop out because of the way it's bound to the window sill. it can break. while we're looking at blowing trees is something can blow into you. >> i didn't realize it was lester's crew. i didn't want to see something who arab horrible happen. >> these aren't small trees. these are massive -- at least two story palm trees. the leaves look like tissues. >> these are tropical trees in a tropical region that are meant to blow. when you see them doing that, that tells you it's very serious. it takes a lot to make a palm tree do that. this is, as lester said, this is real. it's something to stand in winds that are that high. that are that forceful just to keep yourself up and not get hit. if you're a structure, a house, there's windows, it's old, there's a roof, there's roof tiles, there's furniture all over the place, there's mobile homes, there's trailers, things that are not aerodynamic. it's like a tornado. that's the way you have to think about this. it's not just the force of the wind. it's everything that can get blown away in the force of the wind. here in new york we have our electrical wires under the ground. in most of the country they are above ground. every tree that falls and sign that falls takes a power line down with them. it might be well over a week. it might be a few weeks before power is restored to some of thee these communities. this is a wooded part of florida. >> what was the cost of florence? >> i thought i saw something that was about 9 to 10 billion. >> it's slightly harder because of flood damage. in a hurricane like katrina or andr andrew, it's hard because you have buildings. i think we have lester back can you hear us? >> reporter: i do. we're waiting it out now. the news person wanin me wants pull the mattress back so badly but from the howls i'm hearing, it's still not safe. we have cracked the open a bit to get a bit of equalization. at one point i felt it bowing a bit and the building from time to time buffeted. the feeling if you been to a tall skyscraper on a windy day. we're feeling that in a three story brick building. it's a sturdy building. we feel relatively okay. it's not every day i stand with eight or nine of my colleagues in a small room with a mattress up against the window. it's a new one for me. >> to let you crew know, you are in the south western corner of the eye of the hurricane. you have another 10 to 15 minutes in the eye and then you will start to see breaks and the winds will start to get less and less. by time you get to maybe 4:00 or 5:00, i think much of the high winds will be gone and over with at that point. >> reporter: well, i think the rest of the crew could hear you, you could get an applause. help me understand how quickly this is moving. i think i went down for breakfast, 8:00, 8:30, it was raining and a bit of a breeze. i made a comment, it doesn't look like a hurricane is coming and then boom. a few hours later it was rocketing. >> it was moving at about 15 miles an hour. i've been telling people that sometimes you get these big huge hurricanes where the hurricane force winds extend 100 miles from the center. this had it 30 miles from the center. this was more like a bowling ball. you and your crew and everywhere else are the pins. it just slammed on shore and just as quickly as it came in, it is going to go out. a lot of people will say it's like a two or three hour long tornado. more than a hurricane. >> as opposed to florence that hung around in some places for 25 hours. >> correct. >> lester, not far from where you are, tindale air force base had 120 miles an hour wind gusts and had one of the lowest pressures ever recorded in the united states only about two hours ago in landfall. you guys just happen to be on what we call the dirty side of where the eye went in. you had to go through the northern eye wall, the western eye wall. now you're in the south western eye wall. give another 10, 15 minutes and you'll be able to open the window and show us what's going on. >> loester, we're looking at a picture of the storm. moments ago we were looking at the live shot. the wind blowing in panama city. i want to go back to where you are. you said this morning you went down for breakfast and made a comment, it doesn't look like we're seeing a hurricane any time soon. i know you haven't been out of hotel in hours but try to give us a sense where you are if people evacuated, the number of people. how serious they took this. for those of us in new york, we had very little warning of it. it almost came out of nowhere. i'd love to know how the locals received it. >> reporter: we saw no one on the streets. we were in a commercial area when i ventured out earlier. we didn't see any other vehicle ons the street or first responders. they come off the streets when the winds get over 50 miles an hour. if you're not in a modern, strong building, i would worry about your safety. i was covering hurricane florence a few weeks ago. this is a good reminder of not all hurricanes are created equal. even we get fall for that trap -- our mosmoke alarm going off. i have no idea why. we're good, right? >> yeah. >> reporter: you sometimes think i've been in strong hurricanes before or we have seen hurricanes slow down in the last minute. >> lrpall right. we lost that signal again. that happens in hurricanes. that's right outside of where lester is. you can imagine it becomes hard to maintain signals with modern technology that we've got. >> i can't stop thinking about florida especially parts of this region are rural. we know what a large senior citizen population exists there. >> large retired population. it's not a complicated built up part of florida. it's not like going down from west palm beach and ft. lauderdale and miami and down to the keys. this is very different. it's rural. it's small houses. it's wooden construction in many cases and it's a lot of trees. not just big tropical palm trees. they have live oaks. it's a very, very forested, wooded area. >> let's listen in. we can hear the wind in panama city. >> to be clear, the crew is inside and getting this. that's not what it's like outside to be in that wind. think about this, wind speeds up to 150 miles an hour sustained. the thing about sustained winds, maybe people have been outside and felt 40, 50 miles an hour wind gusts. >> for a moment. >> this is sustained. it keeps on blowing. then you have wind gusts up to 175 miles an hour. if you are a structure, you're a sign, any of these things, that's what you're up against. that's where the trees come down. that's where things go flying. it's the one blessing of the storm is that it's moving relatively quickly over land. it's 14 or 15 miles an hour. at some point hurricane florence was three or four miles per hour. you can walk faster than that. this thing is moving with some speed. >> hurricane florence, and maybe you can speak about it again, was this dull hit over and over for a long time. >> it was raining and much wetter. it was much, much, much bigger. everything was getting rained on. that much rain saturates the ground. it doesn't take as much wind to saturate a tree. in faster moving storm, sometimes you can avoid some of that danger but this is really fast. i think we need to put this in perspective. i've covered a lot of hurricanes. i've covered 7 hurricanes, i think. i've never felt 155 miles an hour of sustain winds in my life. >> just think about it when we were thinking about kerry saerns sanders who was on the back side. >> he's a real veteran. >> his baseball helmet flew off his head. without the assistance of another reporter or crew manager, he couldn't make it back into the building safely. >> i came to tallahassee on monday that they were just getting wind this would be bigger than a category 2 storm. they were prepared to go without power for two to ten days. tallahassee is inland but it's feeling the effects of this now. 53 miles an hour gusts. matt bradley is live in tallahassee for us. what's the situation there? it's the state capital. it's big population center. >> reporter: that's right. you can see right now there's nobody around. i'm standing in the fsu campus. this is iconic center of it. the ruby diamond auditorium. the last classes were on monday. they stopped everything until the coming monday. the city of tallahassee issued an extreme wind warning. they only do that when wind gusts are expected to be over 130 miles an hour. you would think a place like tallahassee is used this kind of weather but this is an unprecedented storm for this part of florida. people are taking as many precautions as they can. the big thing is trees. that's their thing. 50% of the city is covered in trees. every time they get this weather, the trees fall on houses, cars and power lines. i was talking to the mayor a couple howevers ago. he was saying that's the real concern because last time they had a hurricane, it knocked out -- it affected 90% of the electrical grid. that's what they are worried about this time. 90% of the electrical grid and they are hoping to bounce back from that and show they can get out there as fast as they can and get the lights back on. >> nobody is kidding themselves even on monday when they thought it was a category 2. they were prepared to get out. >> matt is on a college campus. you have thousands of students to worry about. >> thanks. let's go to terry vega who is riding out the storm in panama beach. what's your situation? >> raining and the wind was blowing and a tree just snapped in half in our backyard. >> tell us a bit about your home. are you on the first floor, second floor? what's the structure like? >> our structure is a ranch. it was a brand new home. it has two by six studs and we thought with a category 2, even a 3 we were fine. so far we have been but it's a little scary now that it's a four, almost a five. >> how are you feeling at the moment? we were just talking to lester holt who is saying the windows that. do you think the structure will hold? >> i do. we have hurricane shutters on. we have a three inch gap. >> where in the house are you? i believe you're there with your husband, your daughter. have you covered the window in mattresses? are there closets or bathtub for you to get? >> bathtub. our master closet has been filled out. we have a mattress up against our front door because it's half glass. the rest of the windows are covered by hurricane shutters. >> in the event -- we haven't been discuss as much baskecause you're in the middle of a wind event. you're about to get your storm surge, what's your plan for that? >> we do have an attic, access through our garage. that will be our flood plan. >> you've got enough food and stuff to sustain you for a few days, if you need that? >> absolutely. we definitely prepared that way. >> you and your family and your pets are hunkering down. panama city is, was in mands toi -- mandatory evacuation. did your neighbors stay put or seek shelter? >> we're in a neighbor that doesn't have an hoa. we have quite a few neighbors with mobile homes. people have left the area. there's a lot of people in homes that have stuck around. >> how are your pets doing? sh this is always a major concern. some times pets react badly. how are your pets doing? >> as of this morning they got benadryl so they are doing okay. the cat we didn't give her benadryl. she got a little worried about 10:00 this morning. now she seems to be fine too. >> you do not have power at this point, correct? >> we just lost power probably 20 >> do you have any means of getting news updates? >> i've been trying to get a radio station on my phone but i haven't been able to get that. >> all right. thank you for telling us about what's going on. stay safe with your family and your pets. we will stay in touch with you as well. teri vega is sticking around. sg one thi . >> one thing we're wondering going into the storm is how long will it be before we know how bad the damage was. panama city is coming out of eye wall now. still have some eye winds for the next hour or two. they don't have sunset for the next four hours. we may get our reporters to take a look around. as of now we're isolated into hotel rooms and safe places. >> authorities normally use 40 to 50 miles an hour as a guideline. >> they won't send the bucket trucks in that weather. >> explain that. >> the trucks that cut tree limbs down and restore electricity. you'll see there are convoys of these trucks that get into position. i didn't see them this time because this happened so fast. >> i'm sure they are positioned. that's one of the interesting things is because of storm a lot of states have partnerships. they're never next to each other. if you're in oklahoma people are on therapy way to florida. they are probably in some rest area in houston right now getting ready to come in. >> all the motels will be filled. they will not start fixing trees and power lines. >> they will try to get to their 911 calls and get to the priority situations as soon as it's safe. >> they are great american h heroes. let's go to gabe gut. what's the situation where you are? >> reporter: we were just about a mile or so closer to the coast a bit ago. that was starting to flood heavily. the he tell is about four or five feet of water surrounding that hotel. we're at a new location. my camera man is on the second floor balcony. we're a bit more sheltered so we don't feel the wind quite add much. the wind has started to die down here. the water was really rising as we were leaving downtown. that really started to take on water. there were several rows in that historic downtown that were under several feet of water and that water was still rising. the concern here again, local authorities has been the massive storm surge. we're in the east of where this storm was making landfall. we're on the dirty side of the storm. the worst of it was about an hour, hour and a half or so where it was hard to stand outside and the water was dan r dangerously rising. what we saw driving out here during the height of the storm was a lot of down trees. there's power out to this entire area. the downtown area will be devastated. we're expected high tide tonight. back to you. >> bill, when gabe says on the dirty side of the storm. tell us about that. >> the dirty side, people will refer to that on the eastern side of the storm. you get the southerly winds for a longer period of time which tend to be the stronger winds. a lot of times it's the rainier side. they will drag the cooler, drier air on the back side. usually they will call that the dirty side. >> got it. what happens now? we haven't had and probably because we haven't had an update from the hurricane center yet. i would expect the next report says the winds are lower. >> we'll start quickly lowering. we've been focusing so much on the landfall area and the damage that's being done, let's quickly, we got a lot of people that will be in the way of the storm as we go throughout the evening. probably curious to how this will impact them. you can see as we made landfall here, this was the 2:00 advisory. it will come down from here. we'll get the new forecast path in the hurricane center and new intensity update as we go with the 5:00 p.m. advisory. they had 100 miles an hour winds still at 8:00 p.m. that's still enough to do very significant damage. notice that we go from 100 to 45. once we get down to 45, you don't begin too lose too many tree limbs unless they are dead any ways. somewhere to about 2:00, 3:00 mr. the morning is where we'll have considerable tree damage and power outages as long the path as it continues. after that we'll get a good rain event as we bring the storm through north carolina. it will go close to charlotte and columbia and exiting virginia beach. mostly rainmaker with winds in the 40, maybe 50 miles an hour. nothing you can't handle and you haven't seen before. we still do have tropical storm warnings. this is a pretty incredible map in itself. we have tropical storm warnings that go from panhandle of florida. winds are expected to be above 39 miles an hour. tomorrow morning, we're going to have some pictures of our crews along the coast near hilton head. the wipnds will be pretty stron. it shouldn't be bad enough to cause too much significant damage. >> with irma there was the whole issue -- whatever one ended up hitting jacksonville after going through the whole western side. nobody saw that. >> the st. john river backed up. >> it was is upsunny and then t water game up. >> all the storms are unique. >> this one isn'ts big and doesn't carry as much moisture. >> it's moving faster. if it was moving slower, we would be talking about potential for rain. we expect localized flash flooding. nothing that will be close to huge river flooding or anything like that? >> it carries a lot of power. let's go back to kerry sanders. he's just outside his hotel the. >> i'm kerry sanders in panama city beach, florida. we're facebook live reporting as the hurricane is hitting us with the hardest winds that hurricane michael has presented to this community so far. the eye wall passed about 15 miles from us. the mexico city beach or the mexico beach where the full eye came across is about 25 miles. the strongest winds with the hurricane are right up next to the eye wall. the winds we're experiencing here have gusted at about 130 some odd miles an hour. it's still really strong. one of the interesting things to note is because the eye passed to the east, the wind has been keeping some of the surf that you see behind me off the who are. now with the movement and the circulation of the storm as it moves inland, we're going to see the wind coming from the backside pushing this water up onto the coast here. it's already tremendously high. it's going to come right up to the sand dunes and maybe over. that's what leads to what is known as storm surge. the storm surge causes so much destruction and damage. we have seen minor damage. it's very hard in the middle of a hurricane to get out and do much of a survey. the fire department say they have been receiving emergency calls from the residents who decided to stay put. about 24,000 chose the stay on the beach here because they went to bed last night with a category 2 and said we've been through that before and woke up to a category 4. the people who decided to stay here were stuck here and could not leave. the fire department is not going out. there are those emergency calls but they're not going out. they say they will respond after the hurricane passes. the chief saying it puts too many lives in danger to go out in this kind of environment. the update is it's still ongoing. we still have ways to go. the eye wall has made or the eye has come ashore just to the east of us. the wind is blowing. there's hopefully no debris in this area. i'm going to wrap it up. even though we have some protection here with the helmet. probably safer to move inland and get up to a building where we have some protection. i'm kerry sanders, nbc news for facebook live. >> kerry has done a lot of hurricanes. he knows how to keep himself safe. >> he saved a dolphin last year. he did. >> i saw it live. >> when you hear these guys telling you how damgs it is, you know it's serious. this is what we saw earlier. there goes his helmet. >> losing a baseball helmet. >> that's really wind. >> i've seep him deal with hurricanes for a long time. that's a struggle. i'm fascinating that bill says by 8:00, there's some places that will still have 100 miles an hour winds. >> that may surprise some people. they were expecting 24, 48 hours ago they weren't expecting a hurricane. we continue to look at the radar over your shoulder there. now we're about to exit the panama city area and about to head up towards i-10. it's one of those areas. now we'll start talking about this storm crossing into geor a georgia. >> all right. let's bring back ken graham, director of the national hurricane center. this has been an extraordinary two hours for ali and i sitting here watching this storm progress. how have things changed for you since we spoke? >> you keep making the force for hurricane force winds in geor a georgia. it is really important. it will still produce those hurricane force winds into georgia. not just the damage winds along the coast. you saw how large the rain shield is. you'll get the winds inland. the idea it's going go into central georgia. we'll still see high winds. at what point does it stop worrying you. at some point it becomes a normal stand that a normal city is handle. >> at that point it does. one of the worries that i have is once you get inland, we have such a focus on the winds, but if you think about the flow around the hurricane, even when you're a hurricane spinto georg, the flow will provide on shore flow. we've been talking about this storm surge. you get the on shore flow continuing, you can still push water in. the places that have high water will continue to rise in someer. i'll look at some of the data. one thing we have been trying to communicate is the storm surge isn't just coastal. you can see some of your barrier ie labslands here. follow it up for miles and miles. look alt tt the rises on these rivers. it's inland. we're seeing it happen. it will keep the water up. >> anything to worry about when you start getting around the great bend and into the nature coast and then when you start getting south into more populated areas around st. petersburg, clearwater, are they at risk because of storm surge? >> you get the storms that are so expansive and the winds so far away. look at tampa, st. pete. some of these places could see inundation of the low level roads. even moving north where you get to crystal river, four the six feet. you can get some places where the water piles up. look at the shape of the coastline. it's the water piles up in the area and moves upstream and piles up even more. those are the areas we get the high levels of water. >> thanks very much for your help in understanding this still remains having made landfall, still remains a very serious form with consequences for people inland and along the coast. ken graham at the national hurricane center. thank you. >> i just keep thinking back here, we're looking at video from mexico beach. >> that is panama city beach. >> just a few minutes ago when we were speaking to lester holt and he brought the microphone to the window, today door and it wasn't open. it sounded like a jet engine. there's lester in a three story brick structure with the microphone put next to the door. >> the actual numbers we're s seeing. i want to show you pictures of where this thing made landfall, mexico beach. take a look. that's the first pictures of destruction that we're seeing. when bill said tornado, that looks like a tornado. that's shredded homes. that doesn't feel like sustained wind. that feels like real, serious high wind damage. let's listen in. sg >> we can only hope the people in the vicinity evacuated. look at the amount of debris. >> if there were, they said 155 mile sustained winds. if that was true, that's where it happened. i can't tell what that really was. >> we don't know if it's a lot or more than a lot. >> they say it was a house torn to pieces. >> there's nothing to see that we can point at. >> i would say that looked like a tornado. >> fair to say, that's a possibility. there are tornadoes inside of hurricanes. >> there are, yes. that was the damage assessments will be done well after the storm. there's more damage like this from mexico beach area. that's the worst hit area. i was looking at it. they have a population of about 1,000 people that live in mexico beach. i don't know how many of those people remain behind or not. i assume a few did. hopefully we'll hear from them and their survival stories. >> do we know where it was taken from? we know it was in mexico city beach. we're back looking at images from panama city beach, florida. it looks as though the rear view mirror on the passenger side has been ripped off. we spoke to kerry sanders on panama city outside his hotel and lester holt who is inside a three-story structure and he couldn't even show us outside the window because it was too dangerous. lester and his crew put the mattresses against those glass sliding doors. >> for people who do this on a regular basis, those of us who have covered a number of hurricanes, you don't really hear the words too dangerous from us a lot. we run toward these things. it's what we do. so when you have veteran hurricane reporters telling you that it's dangerous, it's the real thing -- >> her glasses blew off her head. >> while she was on tv. kerry sanders' baseball helmet blew off his head. mariana was holding onto something. kerry was holding as he was trying to get back from the live shot that he did, he was holding onto a pole while there was another reporter holding onto him. this is just humans. now you think of these sustained winds hitting a structure on an ongoing basis with rain and that's the danger and what takes the power out and that can't be replaced very easily. >> i keep thinking about the locals. lester holt said when he went down for breakfast this morning he looked out the window and said it doesn't look like much of a storm. fast forward -- >> this is lester's crew trying to hold that window in earlier. they felt it blowing and felt it was going to blow and subsequently put a mattress there. you can see the window moving there. >> is allen pierce with us? we have allen pierce with us. he is riding out the storm in apalachicol apalachicola. allen, are you safe? >> oh yeah, we're about four blocks off the coast and we have the bay protecting us from the gulf of mexico. the wind is blowing like a freight train. if you're outside it sounds like you're standing on the tarmac of a jet runway. the noise is just overwhelming. >> what's the situation in apalachicola as far as you know? are a lot of people riding out the storm there? >> no, i don't think a lot of people are. i had an affiliation with the county so i stayed behind to help in cases of recovery, but i think most people left. i haven't been outside the house since the storm really set in about 10:00 this morning. it's been very windy and unsafe outside. >> even though you're inside, tell us what it sounds like. our colleague, lester holt, when we spoke to him a few minutes ago, even with the windows closed, the wind sounded as though it was a jet engine. what's it like where you are? >> absolutely. apalachicola is probably 40 miles from mexico beach so we're just outside the inner wall so to speak of that bad band. but it sounds exactly like a jet plane but a jet plane that wasn't going to ever take off but rev its engine for three hours. >> what do you expect to happen? what have you been told? as you said you have some affiliation with the local government but what are you being told to expect? are you expecting to be out of power for a long time? what happens next? >> it's unknown. the power went out about 11:00 this morning throughout the town. the city turned the sewer system off yesterday as a matter of fact thinking we were going to get a high surge in the storm yesterday. we didn't want to get salt water into our central sewer system so they turned the sewer off yesterday. the power went off today. really i don't have any idea of how many downed power lines there are. i look out my windows and i see most of the trees are standing up in my little neighborhood, but where is the power coming from and how long it's going to take to recover, i don't know. our biggest problem is we only have one highway, u.s. 98, that runs east and west, the only east/west corridor that connects panama city on the west and tallahassee on the east. >> what road is that, just so we know? >> u.s. 98. >> 98, that's the one we've been talking about. we've been very worried that u.s. 98 is going to be an impassable road for a while. by the way, for those of you crossing the country using interstate 10, that's almost where this storm is right now. allen, thanks very much. stay safe. we'll stay in touch with you. i want to bring in retired army lieutenant general russell honoray who led the efforts after hurricane katrina. one of the points you make, general, is that the places that are hardest hit are populated by the people who can least do something about it. that is more true of this storm than it even was of florence. >> absolutely. we're not talking about a heavy industrial area where you have high income. what you have is high investment property along the coast there. as you move in to florida up toward tallahassee, you have a large concentration of vulnerable population. the right front quadrant is going to have a significant impact by all prediction on tallahassee. as of this morning, they only had 57 shelters open in florida. i expect that number is going to go up significantly when the power goes out because people will have to speak places where they can stay alive and get food and water. the challenge is going to be the trees will stop the roads. we're in for a hard time the next 12 hours in keeping people alive. >> with winds at 155 miles per hour, given how rural it is, how tall the trees are, how long could this area have no power? >> it could be weeks, worst case scenario. i use worst case scenario because yesterday the governor and the federal government did a great job getting ready for a category 2 storm and the storm showed up as a 4. it reassures the military planning process of prepare for the worst and hope for the best. this storm reminds us that we can't prepare for the category, we've got to prepare for the total effects. with a category 4, it will take the power infrastructure down, the hard, big poles you see up that look like little eiffel tower towers, that's the distribution line. when they go down, it can take days to get back up. distribution lines can take weeks in isolated areas. >> that's an important point. a storm of this category can take down harder infrastructure than just trees and simple polls. general, always good to see you, thank you. >> ali, i just keep thinking, 155 mile-per-hour winds. we saw those images from mexico beach and the amount of mobile homes could simply be decimated. we can only hope those people did evacuate. >> that's it for this hour. our special coverage of hurricane michael continues after this. you're watching msnbc. got it? 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