flights to go out. people have to hunker down in and around this area. if you re on manhattan island and elsewhere relying on bridges, we re told by officials here if the wind speeds get to 40 miles per hour they may knee restrictions to travel over bridges. if they get to 60 miles per hour, they may close them out completely. find where you need to be right now and get into place. we ll have a light rain for a while and people will be kept skal. this afternoon and evening it will pick up. with regard to evacuating, you talk about the 375,000 in the low-lying area. by what time must that be done? reporter: they want that to happen right now. the mayor tweeted out a short time ago people should be out by now, and if they aren t this is the last chance to do it. they hope those evacuations happen by noon today. the reason it has to happen by noon is in a city where so many people are carless, the whole mass transit system will shut
jeff, stay with us right now. we ll go to tom costello. tom, i understand you ve seen a tremendous deterioration of the weather conditions in the last hour there. reporter: yeah, and i d love to bring jeff in on this. let me orient our viewers. if you go off of my left hand, that s the south down towards north carolina, that s up towards new york, behind me is the atlantic ocean. we have seen a dramatic pickup in just the last hour. i have winds averaging 20 miles per hour. when we stepped out an hour ago, we were 10 maybe. the ocean has really started churning, and what s interesting here, jeff, and i d love to know why and i m sure you can explain it, the rain and wind are coming out of the north. i m getting pelting on the north side of my face here and the wind is hitting us. this is how the storm is churning in the ocean. most certainly, tom. it s kind of shifting and
essentially, alex, the word resonating with everyone is isabel. that hurricane hit this area of 2003. people don t think of washington, d.c. or virginia as a hurricane area, but there is experience here. isabel caused a billion dollars of worth of damage. the mayor said when isabel came here it was dreadful, they had $2 million worth of damage in this area alone and muayed the water up to three blocks in the city. he said it wouldn t be impossible for that to happen today. the concern here in our area is power, flood and trees, specifically the flood we expect between 6 to 12 inches of rain here specifically in the d.c. met row area. there s a lot of trees and homes built around the trees not only in downtown areas of washington but in the suburbs. it s expected that if you live in this area, there s a good chance you will lose power, alex. there s mandatory evacuations for 11 loc 1 locality had virgi?
said could take place in a cat 2 in roughly 40 minutes, so here it may take longer. if it does happen this could be a significant issue several days into next week as well. alex. let s show the difference between you and where mike seidel is battling things. this is one big storm, and there s a little bit of rain, correct, peter, where you are? which means outer, outer bands of this huge hurricane irene are already beginning to be felt there in the new york city area. reporter: you re right. that is exactly what the concern is. we re going to be in this for a while. rain totals have been estimated as much as a foot in places in and around new york city. i was speaking to a colleague on long island saying they are experiencing those outer rain bands for the first time as well. to give you a sense now, it s not just transit on the ground affected. air travel just two hours from now, they will stop allowing incoming flights, alex, at 9:00 this evening, we have learned they will no lon
the boats would be out of the water by now. reporter: yeah, alex, the rain has started in the d.c. area and is expected to continue. since i last spoke to you, a lot of boat owners are moving their vessel foss flos to the floatin. this boat owner here mike said he s going to triple tie the ropes and put floaties out and hang ten, if you will to keep it here. as for d.c. and virginia as of right now we believe there s over 25,000 people without power in southern virginia. washington, d.c. is in a state of emergency as is alexandria as is the entire state of virginia. they re in full hurricane preparation. there s a lot of tourists and local residents looking at the water. they have left and gone home once the rain packed up. we heeded them to do that as well.