Than that. so damn impressive. our thanks to carolyn manno for that piece. i want to bring sara back in. you re on the ground in florida. we re watching calm before the storm. a lot more to come and a lot of preparations under way. reporter: it is extremely beautiful. it is about to get extremely dangerous. lots of evacuations under way. cnn this morning continues right now. a major hurricane is barrelling towards florida s gulf coast. millions along the gulf now being told to prepare to evacuate as idalia rapidly gains strength. floridians should expect this storm will be a major cat 3 plus hurricane. fema deployed two incident management teams to tallahassee. this is a big event here. storm surge could be 12 feet. it is not going to bode well for the west coast. execute those plans and reach out to the resources that we