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nightly news begins right now. announcer: from nbc news world headquarters in new york, this is nbc nightly news, with lester holt. good evening, we re tracking matthew. the massive hurricane on the verge of strengthening as it bears down on the bahamas on its way to a possible punishing landfall in central florida. the storm has already taken at least 25 lives on its march through the caribbean. this infrared satellite image of matthew is generated a lot of attention today. appearing to many as a skull to others as an animal. right now computer models show the hurricane walking a narrow tightrope as it reaches the florida coast friday morning, possibly as a category 4 storm. with palm beach among the places preparing for the worst. al roke certificate watching it all for us. what s the latest guidance? we see nothing that s going to lessen the storm right now. category 3, 205 miles south-southeast of nassau. 125-mile-per-hour winds. as you said, by friday mor ....
this is the cbs evening news with scott pelley. pelley: one of the most powerful hurricanes in nearly a decade is on its way to the southeast. watches and warnings are up from the southern tip of florida up the atlantic coast to south carolina. 500,000 people are being urged to move inland. airlines are canceling hundreds of flights, and amtrak is shutting down service in the hurricane matthew, a category three storm with winds as high as 120mph, is blamed for as many as 25 deaths in haiti and the dominican republic. we have a team of correspondents on this story, and first we will go to omar villafranca in the bahamas. reporter: the outer bands of hurricane matthew are starting to pound the island of exuma here in the bahamas, but across the caribbean sea, people to clean up after taking a beating from the powerful storm. in this town, 145mph winds left path of destruction. the hurricane destroyed hundreds of homes and flooded the streets. the storm toppled trees ....
per hour. a lot of colors but we will focus in on our counties where we have the tropical storm watch. thursday night through the entire day on friday, the potential is there for 40 to 60 miles per hour winds. the reason as i mentioned, this thing is paralleling the coast as opposed to going in. this will be an entire day event plus. highlands and polk county will be in the worst of it. the path of the storm takes us on a drier side. i don t think this will be a big rain event like hermine. we are looking at rainfall tallies of 1 to 3 inches at most. we got more in the last few days with thunderstorms. this is a wind deal, not so much rain. the rain will be a problem along 95 along with the fact that they will get hurricane force winds as well. so, we have to watch the track. if it shifts further west we have to increase the wind speeds and potentially the counties impacted by tropical storm force winds. the day on friday. i will talk about the exact path where it s hea ....
approaches, florida, correct? absolutely. you saw how close it will come to florida. within a few miles, within the range of the hurricane force winds. the latest 115 miles per hour. that is down from where we were. you would expect that as it interacted with eastern cuba in deadly fashion with the torrential downpours and the storm surge that is going to be approaching the bahamas. the chain will be raked the next couple of days with incredible amounts of rain an surge. they will get it all. 130 miles per hour winds continues. as you see it move toward florida, a close up shot, you can see this is just this is as close as you can gee. as i said this morning, if i am on the east side of the peninsula, i would expect a landfall of a category 4, not the forecast but worst-case scenario. you can see a bit of a jog to the west by a few miles and you parallels the coast up to eastern parts of jacksonville then into the carolinas. a lot of colors. we will focus in on our ....
it does look like it will be moving quickly and we will have more confidence in the movement of this front as we get the energy in here tonight into this front to show where it is headed. it does look like high pressure will build in behind it and botle this thing up and let it swirl around over the atlantic for many days to come. more on matthew trait ahead. meantime, we will brighten it up and warm it up near 70 in a few locations, julie. i want to start with this drive time because we have increased quite a bit on 495 10 minutes ago we were in the 20-minute range. a 16-mile stretch from milford up to berlin and the reason it is so high because of that energy and the because of that accident and closure right at exit 26. as we shift eastbound, a new stent on 128 near granite street in braintree. more live drive times. 25 minutes on the pike eastbound. pretty typical 17 minutes on the expressway and 23 minutes on 128 southbound. better look at the destruction lev ....