we saw heavy downpour, strong winds and would hit lulls and become dry and calm. now the winds moving steadily over past couple hours and notable, the water line. the gulf has slowly inched closer to land hitting the dune, probably moved up 10, twenty, 30 feet overnight consuming the beach behind me. seeing combination of high tide with storm surge we ve been reporting on. this area is low lying area, st. pets beach is barrier island, popular tourist destination. there are hotels and sprawling resorts up and down the beach. mandatory evacuation orders for this town, mostly a ghost town. most people are cooperating. governor desantis said if you have not evacuated by now, a first responder may not be able to respond to you. todd: matt finn, thank you. bring in nicole valdes live on the ground in tampa. nicole, what are you seeing out there? nicole: just along tampa bay, show you this, we are seeing three feet of storm surge come crashing over bayshore boulevard, site local
As soon as the storm passes, they will be deployed to power outages. we cover that pinellas county area and we have about twenty,000 customers in this pinellas county area, customers without power in the state of florida. ashley: how long can outages last? right now, the outages in pinellas county, damage may not be as great, we cover up through mexico beach area. some territory is going to get hit with a cat 4 storm, that damage will be more serious, wires and poles down and that will take longer to repair. ashley: anna gibbs, thank you for your time. todd: with that, bring in michael waltz, joins us now, and
Is category 4 here at the last minute and sometimes stubborn ness of people that don t want to leave their stuff. i can replace stuff, i can t replace you. the new floridians are usually scared and head to far north places. i m worried about those too stubborn to leave. todd: all eyes on florida, thoughts and prayers with you folks getting ready for the historic storm. thank you. turning to the race for the white house, trump teaming claim who is the rising threat. wait until you hear how much donald trump raised after his mug shot went public. ashley: we are following hurricane idalia before it makes landfall in just a few hours.
Once it is over? every time we have a storm, we bring thousands of trucks and crews from across the country. they are here and waiting for the storm to pass. we have trucks near the villages at ocala and tropicana field. ashley: as far as inventor and he supplies, do you have everything you need? are you looking for more? we have supplies throughout our service territory, we keep them as far away as possible, we don t want the storm to blow through the materials, we bring materials as close as we can, far enough away so they are not in the way of the storm.
Trajectory and track. the flow is offshore, wind is blowing toward gulf of mexico at the moment, however, the center will approach this area in the next hour to hour and a half and winds will switch around and we ll have to watch for major water push that will come inland. we have not seen much in the way of people in thisirria, a great thing. we were here yesterday talking to residents and taylor county deputy. there is mandatory evacuation in effect with this category 4 approaching. looks like most people took the warning seriously. todd: the word unprecedented keeps popping up, how does this storm compare to others you have covered? this is different because of