Is Cnn Newsroom. We begin with Breaking News as we track Hurricane Helene, its now the strongest storm to ever make landfall in floridas Big Bend, sweeping across the coast hours ago as an extremely dangerous category four hurricane with winds of 140 miles per hour. Now the effects have been felt far from the center of the storm. The mayor of clearwater told me his community has been inundated despite being 100 miles from the center now, helene is weakening now but has knocked out power to more than 1,000,000. 5 homes and businesses in florida, georgia, and the carolinas. At least three people have been killed as the storm continues to pummel the southeast to end georgia. And one in florida we have had a report of a fatality on the roadway. Car driving on i4 near your Ybor City and tampa, was hit when a sign fell onto onto the highway. So that just shows you that its very dangerous. Chris conditions out there you need to be right now. Just hunkering down nows not the time to be going o
Tallahassee within the next few hours. Now, right now, helene is an extremely dangerous category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 140 miles per hour. So, for more than 545,000 households in florida, they are reportedly without power and thousands have been ordered to evacuate from their homes. As you can see from these satellite images, helene is huge and is expected to affect nearly the entire state of florida with damaging winds and heavy rain. So, what may bring the most danger are the storm surges. Earlier today, residents experienced flooding in places like pine island, which is just outside of fort myers. But, flooding will likely get much worse across the state as the night continues. A storm surge warning is in place for almost the entirety of florida s west coast. This video is a simulation of what could happen if the storm surge rises to approximately 10 feet. But, in some parts of florida, officials look worn that a hurricane helene could cause storm surges of up
Theyre saying it could Go To 9 . That would be worse than two years ago, except it would be selfinflicted, really key line from the authors here. They say that we find ironically that the spot fight his make the foreigners pay rhetoric. This package of policies does more damage to the u. S. Economy than to any other in the world which kate, i just think brings us to one of the ironies here, right . The economy is the number one issue. Voters say they trust trump over harris on the economy. And yet these experts, when they dig into the policies, they he say that he wouldnt just fail to fix inflation. He would actually make things worse brutal, brutal analysis for sure. Thank you so much. Matt were going to head over to florida right now where the governor of florida is holding an update on Hurricane Helene as its making its way to the Gulf Coast and major general John Haas from the Florida National Guard as you know, as of 8 00 a. M. Hurricane helene is now a category two hurricane. It
Saying yeah, we have a category three hurricane on our hands right now, what 125 mile per hour winds my point that out because it category four hurricane starts at 130 mile per hour winds, so were really talking about a difference of five to ten miles per hour here, right . So right now, its a very Highend Category three teetering on that category four, which is why the national Hurricane Center is saying, hey, look, its still sitting over very warm from Ocean Waters right now. It has all the ingredients it needs to strengthen. So theres really not much to stop it from gaming that five miles per hour that it needs to just get to that category and become a category four either way, whether its this Highend Category three, or it makes that fivemile per Hour Difference to a category four. We are still talking about the Sam Catastrophic on survivable impacts when it comes to the Storm Surge and heavy Rain And Everything else. Weve been talking about, the radar. You can see again still with
coast. here is what we know right now. you re looking live at key west, florida where rough surf from ian has churned up. soon the national hurricane center will provide an update on ian s strength and path. it seems to be changing. right now projected to hit florida as at least a category three storm. major airports are closing. tampa international will suspend operations in about an hour. orlando will be doing the same tomorrow. the city of tampa will be issuing a curfew soon when winds hit 40 miles an hour. welcome, everybody. i m neil cavuto. they are battening down the hatches as they say and preparing for the worst hoping it won t be that bad. right now this storm, well, it looks very bad. doesn t max gordon know it. he s in st. pete with more. max? neil, mandatory evacuations are underway in pinellas county. we re talking about zones a, b and c and for folks in mobile homes. all of those people need to get out as soon as they can. right now we re standing in evacuati