todd: hurricane ian plowing through western cuba yesterday knocking out power to the entire country and devastating the most important tobacco farms in the country used to produce cuba s iconic cigars. you are watching fox and friends first, i m todd piro. carley: i m carley shimkus, our reporters are live across florida this morning, we begin with senior meteorologist, janice dean who is tracking it from our studio. janice: they just upped the winds, that is a strong category four storm, the pressure has dropped by 10 millibars. it is strengthen as it approaches the coast, we r expecting landfall this afternoon. heightened awareness to the storm surge and for hours it will batter the coast and interior sections of florida. rain and wind and storm surge will impact coast of florida and inland will flood two-story homes at the coast. you don t have time, you can hide from the wind, you have to run from the storm surge. wind gusts in excess of 100 mile per hour for dura
Forever. steve: that s right. and we should point out, most of the schools have been closed for today and impacted area. one of the impacted areas is hudson, florida. let s take a look and janice was talking about the storm surge and there, ladies and gentlemen, exhibit a. as landfall is now imminent, but, listen, the state of florida has been preparing. we had the governor live from the command center about 45 minutes ago. and he talked about how they have staged generators. they have got over a million gallons of gas staged. they have got star links, which, if people are unable to communicate they have 500 star links they will drop into different communities so people can get the word out if they need help. brian: good job elon musk. greg steube joins us from sarasota where his district is under a storm surge warning nearly a year after being pummeled by hurricane ian.
Myers, they had a 10 to 15-foot storm surge. very capable to that. wind gusts 81 miles per hour at hoarse shoe beach. sarasota 70 miles per hour. looking at the satellite imagery and put a marker on here a few minutes ago, probably about 20 minutes ago. we are 7 miles from the center of the storm. so that is just an historical point. the lowest pressure point that comes on shore. national hurricane center deems the place where it comes on shore and the time. it s just for historic purposes. we are seeing the worst of the winds right now, that core of hurricane force winds is going to last for a duration of hours here. and we actually have an extreme wind warning. it doesn t happen very often but because of how strong this storm is, and winds in excess of 100 miles per hour, you can see the really strong core of winds, you know, right there. so extreme wind warning until 9:15 for the counties of dixie and taylor. so the core. strongest winds making landfall now. we will get the immine
We were on vacation and came home early. i want to be in my district. because i assumed this would be tracked like ian or irma. i don t know what it is with storms first letter i but ian and irma tracked to be in panhandle area and kept moving and was going to hit tampa and coming south and hit sarasota and ended up going through charlotte harbor. anybody in florida when it s coming near your direction needs to be prepared to do the things they need to do to protect their families and their homes. ainsley: did a lot of people evacuate from the tampa area and head down to your district? we evacuated sarasota county evacuated zone 1 i believe. the coast line the barrier islands were evacuated yesterday. so, they didn t the best thing to do is to go inland because then you are going to get away from the storm surge, the wind aren t going to be as bad. but then you are just having to deal with the flooding type issues. but the best thing to do is to go inland and not be on the coas
What can you tell me as you work your way around to the studio? yeah. we lost power about 2:00 a.m. here. at least where i live in sarasota. it s been windy but nothing like what we experienced in ian. obviously what we experienced in ian the people in the big bend area of florida are going to be experiencing. and one of the blessings of this storm, i will say and thanks to your weather team and forecast team, for almost a week, you know, as early as this past weekend, the direction of the storm where they had predicted it was going turned out to be accurate. the challenge is that we had with hurricane ian last year is the track kept moving and a lot of people weren t prepared when it hit. so, kudos to all the weather teams in the forecasters, because they have had plenty of time up there in that big end area to prepare their homes and their families to evacuate, to do the things they need to do to prepare for a category 4 storm like this. ainsley: yeah. we do remember that i had a