Hurricane idalia, this is in the key west area. we re all familiar with this shot. you can see the dark skies and also the waves getting choppy. what i want to point out is that this is roughly 150 to 200 mile was from the strongest part of the strengthening hurricane that we re talking about. so my point being is that impacts will be felt well outside of the center, where this makes landfall. 85 mile per hour winds sustained, gusts over 100. this storm continues to strengthen. and there s explicit language from the national hurricane center they anticipate rapid intensification because it s feeding off of the warm waters that you see behind me. this is a live look at the radar. you can see some of the rain bands making its way into key west, the florida keys, the west coast of the peninsula. we re about an hour, maybe 45 minutes away from our first tropical storm rain bands. we anticipate those gusts to
Not making things any easier. a lot of the water here has no where to go and it will take a couple days to pump it out. kendis? you can see the wind is still pretty gusty there in plaquemines parish. let s bring it in the studio and get the latest on the forecast. you saw the low-lying clouds and the heavy rain coming down and as she said, we re going to continue to see the rainfall really continue here. i wanted to back that up on radar. you can see the rain bands making its way onshore. the difference with these bands, they re coming in from the east side. once they hit land, they are gaining wind speeds. the wind shear that is starting to pick up and that s going to allow for a little bit of rotation. tornado watches still in place for the southern parishes of louisiana into central mississippi until 7:00 tonight. so, we re going to really