full moon that s happening as we speak. we just went through the low tide cycle. that was at 7:56 this morning. we re working our way back up into high tide. so the concern here is that the surge that already broke record levels one of those gusts that come through. we re concerned that the surge later this afternoon, roughly 2:00 p.m., are going to be exacerbated by all of these kind of a company of issues here, the supermoon, the storm surge, the push of the water from the storm and that s going to work together to create even further storm surge flooding concerns here along the tampa bay region. tampa can t see it, but it is over my right shoulder. we ve been here all day and the bay has just been angry. the water pushing up, creating
person from a trailer home community. it is rough out there. ocean water is simply pouring into cities right now including cedar key. this is something people in this lifetime in this area have never seen in person. a storm this strong has not battered the big bend area in 125 years. john berman and sara sidner are leading our live team coverage. john is in tallahassee where rain has been coming down all morning and sara is further south where the water keeps getting closer and closer inland. the message from officials right now is still hunker down. stay off the road. officials say that emergency crews are staged and ready to rescue people if needed as soon as it is safe. we also have crews up and down florida s west coast ready to show you idalia s power and fury like only cnn can. let s get to john berman who is in tallahassee. you ve been able to drive
their needs as soon as possible. most stations receive fuel before the storm. and our port is full of fuel. are there currently any ships waiting to come in to port? yes, during this level of storm, the coast guard made the decision that we would move all vessels out of the port so they don t do damage if they break loose. there will be a pretty much a small fleet of vessels, tankers, they come from texas and louisiana. they will come in behind the storm as soon as we clear with the coast guard the operations of the canhannel ways, make sur they re clear. in the meantime, there are millions of barrels of fuel that can be distributed. but we know that the threats here aren t quite done yet. we understand that high tied is still yesterday to be realized. you have this combination of, you know, the supermoon we ve been talking about that full moon and how that impacts the
here. it has been receding ever since. but the devastation, it is leaving behind is obvious. this is the dockside grill here. the steinhatchee river rushed its banks. we knew that was going to happen. it normally runs from east to west. we re looking south right now. the force of the dirty side of the storm has been forcing so much water upstream against the current here and the victims of that are all of these fishing community villages, condo communities. there s not a lot of development around the corner this way. most of the town is behind us on higher ground. so that s good news. but where you were yesterday, john, the marina, all of that we fear might have been wiped out as it s the first bend in the river coming off of the gulf of mexico right here. the family, the couple who owns this marina, you can see their mood shift from hopeful early in the morning to more resigned as the destruction becomes obvious
the winds are still blowing the water into shore, there are still areas that are seeing the storm surge get worse. let s go to tampa now. we re in different locations in tampa. carlos, first to you, what are you seeing? john, so we are just to the west of where derek van dam has been live the entire morning. we re in a neighborhood where we ve seen some the worst flooding associated with this storm as well as the storm surge. we were trying to get out to pinellas county which is home to clear water and the st. pete area but we weren t able to do that because several of the bridges that connect the tampa bay area to pinellas county are closed because of this storm. you can see here behind me, what a lot of these homeowners are facing at this hour? this house has a dozen sandbags out in the front part of this house. because this is florida and we re close to the bay here, all of this water no doubt pushed its way in.