Moments of peace and then it kicks off and moves in. the streets are being pushed in by water from the gulf of mexico. this is how impressive and forceful the energy is of this water and deindependents on the depth of where you go. this huge hotel is above me and water is lapping up to the front door. serious situation. if you are out, take cover and don t go out. this hurricane, rapid intensification is the issue and theme of what we see, even from hurricane ian last year. back to you. ashley: you are in the thick of that, last 30 minutes to an hour, have you seen anyone out anywhere in the area? so here is the good news, we have seen high water police
And that s when things are going to get really bad here in the big bend region of florida. we ll start having power outages. trees will start coming down. there are a lot of trees here along the coast. and in fact, it makes it quite a difficult chase. i ve chased a lot of hurricanes. cat 5 michael, hurricane ian last year. both of those hurricanes were in more populated areas. this is a low population area. this is good for florida. not as many people will be impacted. as a storm chaser, it s a little bit more difficult for me. and one of the other problems of the storm chaser with this storm, this is a very small storm. the eye of the storm is only about 10 miles across right now. my goal is to get into that eye of the storm. and when you ve got a small eye, it s going to be quite difficult. trees are going to be coming down, blocking traffic. i may have to ride it out here in perry, florida this morning. to that point, obviously, look, there has been a lot of calls to evacuate, and
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
Trajectory towards the big bend, but again, we talk about the oneles with these strengthening storms. any deviation for the west or any deviation to the east has major implications for such large population densities including tampa bay. don t let your guard down. important piece of advice. that rapid intensification. we saw it with hurricane ian last year. the cone of uncertainty leaving the hurricane to move in an unexpected direction. derek van dam, thanks so much. and evacuation orders have been issued for at least 22 florida counties. but officials are telling people in low lying areas or mobile homes to also consider leaving. i m worried a little bit about the rain. we live in mine the wind. we live in a mobile home. but out of all the years i ve been in florida, which is all my years, never really had much
People to the west of where i am who are going to be without power. and brianna, these are still the same people who are recovering from hurricane ian last year. this is a hard-hit region. already people very much impacted by last year s devastating storm. and this certainly won t help. not nearly as powerful a storm as what florida is going to face in the coming hours. but quite an impact it left here all the same. yeah, we can see that in the pictures for sure. patrick oppmann live for us from havana. thank you. i want to bring in cnn s carlos suarez who is live for us in tampa, where the expected storm surge could potentially be a once-in-a-lifetime event. tampa sort of benefiting from a bit of a turn with ian. we re not so sure that s going to happen this time, carlos. can you tell us what you re expecting? reporter: that s exactly right, brianna. so the first rounds of mandatory evacuations have gone out. one out in pinellas county just