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Progresses. just a little bit north of inland of where that storm was expected to hit is tallahassee, florida. we will get to our team in tallahassee in just a minute. i want to start with the, as hurricane idalia has made landfall in florida, talk to the national hurricane center s director, michael brennan. he with talked to you two hours ago. now that we have seen landfall, what should people be looking out for? well, near the core of idalia, in these areas here, perry, and then, you know, lafayette, suwannee counties, dixie, taylor county, treat it like a tornado, get to an interior room in your moment. you don t want to be outside. a lot of debris blowing around, trees coming down, could be structural damage. near the eyewall as it moves inland will see significant wind impacts. also seeing water levels rising on the coast along the big bend region. significant life-threatening storm surge is going to continue ....
Governor who is speaking about the state of things in his state. in the northern part of the state, so far, there have been 262,000 accounts that had lost power, have been restored. there are more than 250,000 accounts that are currently out of power and in need of restoration. as you d imagine, the counties that have the highest percentage of power outs ages in the main pathway of the storm. counties like dixie, taylor, jefferson and columbia. eutility workers are actively working to restore power in all affected areas. they have started doing that as soon as it was safe to do so. so those restoration efforts are ongoing. we do anticipate you could have power outage numbers could go higher, but the restoration numbers are going to go higher as well. ....
Or not is a tough one for a lot of folks. the governor has been pretty clear, it s time to leave yesterday at least, jose diaz-balart, thank you so much, sir. we ll back to you throughout the morning. joining us is the director of the national hurricane center in miami, dr. michael brennan. dr. brennan, thanks for being with us today. what s the latest information you have on what s becoming and now is a category 4 storm, winds 130 miles an hour. yeah, idalia s worst effects are moving into the big bend. you can see the eye moving steadily toward the north-northeast quickly at 17 miles an hour, maximum sustained winds around 130 miles an hour and now starting to see the catastrophic storm surge start to take place across portions of dixie, taylor counties like cedar key, water levels will come up here very, very quickly in the next hour or two as the eye wall of idalia moves onshore and brings those catastrophic winds that you see in the core of a category 4 hurricane to the coast ....
Unfortunately for the people in dixie and taylor and the counties east of us, they bore the brunt of that. but when the path of the storm shifted early this morning and started moving east, it put us on the side of the storm where we did not receive that many severe effects. about 6:00 a.m. this morning, we started to get tropical storm force winds and those were sustained in the county for two, two and a half hours, that did bring some trees down, specifically brought a lot of trees down in our roadways. and so the main goal of the sheriff s office and emergency personnel currently is we want to get the roadways cleared so people have avenues to return to their homes, emergency services can return to normal, commerce can return. it is hard to get a community up and running if people can t drive and move around in it. sure. so are there issues with power outages and you re talking about ....
Could see a storm surge of three-peat. this level is three feet from our studio floor. the state could see water levels as high as seven feet. in citrus county, officials are warning the storm surge could reach nine feet high. and like we said earlier, the highest storm surge is expected to happen in the big bend area in taylor, dixie. that is two feet taller than this wall behind me and for perspective this is a 12-foot ladder. i m 5 11 . the wall behind me, this ladder is 12 feet. the water could tower over the average person. could reach to the top of a bedroom or bathroom. people in as-risk areas told to investigate. that s why.evacuate. that s why. the velocity, a huge component. sara. reporter: that is such a good ....