around as the water continues to recede. john, back to you. john: did the boats, steve, stay where they were supposed to? most of the boats did stay where they were supposed to. we had several people actually sleeping in their boats to keep an eye on them. and to let out slack as necessary. a lot of anxious boat owners just looking with fear as that water rose and rose. we had one good over the seawall but the rest are in good shape where we are standing. john: big difference from ian in fort myers. steve from tarpon springs, florida. thank you. hurricane idalia setting its sights on the southeast, already blasting parts of florida and georgia and forecast to barrel through the carolinas later on tonight. any moment now, the south carolina governor henry mcmaster will be providing an update on the state s response. continuing coverage as america reports rolls into hour two. i m john roberts in washington, good to have you with me. aishah: good to see you again. i m
are already without power. and as millions in georgia and south carolina brace for impact, millions more in florida are starting to take stock of the damage. the coast got the worst of it. this video showing how the wind tore roofs off of houses. downtown cedar key, city hall was swamped with 6 feet of water. officials say the storm surge got as high as 15 feet. that s on top of 100 miles an hour winds. strong enough to pull this gas station awning on to its side. more than a quarter million people are without power in florida. and moments ago, the head of fema talked about the people who chose to ride out the storm. and my biggest concern is those people who chose not to evacuate, and i know that our local first responders, the heroes that are out there in those local communities are doing amazing job already of going into the areas where people did not evacuate, and helping to get them to safety. let s go to crystal river, florida, where msnbc s jose diaz-balart has bee
have our fox news chief meteorologist rick reichmuth with us. rick this has been rough so far. really has. three things, the storm surge that broke records in fort myers and naples as well by a lot by the way, three feet higher than we had ever seen from any kind of storm surge in the past. that obviously causing all that flooding right along the immediate coast. then we have the winds, actual verified winds of 140 miles an hour in cape corral. a lot of this wind was really prolonged because it s such a slow-moving storm and then you have the rainfall. because it s so slow we get rainfall that just continues to batter the state and we ll see big time inland flooding concerns. this made land fall in the exact same space that hurricane charlie came on shore in 2004 which is amazing to have two massive hurricanes or two strong hurricanes like this come on shore in the exact same spot, hard to imagine, because it came on so strong, it s still a category 2 hurricane after having
quickly went to make mention we have an area of low pressure that could develop and bring rain along the coast of texas, this is separate from florence, several systems we are watching but the bottom line is we are uncertain. we are uncertain thursday and friday what happens. that cone of uncertainty getting wider. bottom line north carolina, south carolina, georgia. if it stalls this is going to be a prolonged impact along the coast. remember harvey when it stalls. rob: if it stalls over the ocean it could be good news in the wind department because it might lean less powerful winds. going back to diana a couple decades ago. it stalls, moved southward before making landfall and it weakened to a category one. that would be awesome. however we want people to still
keep your eye on the ball. this is a category 4, still a major hurricane. we have to fine-tune the forecast. along the coast, carolinas, georgia, virginia, keep watching. jillian: people who live along the north carolin