Marker. Their blood type, their d. O. B. , their social, in case the very worst happens. Thats how dire and how broad this storm is on the coast of texas. So obviously, over these next few hours, well be covering this. Were a bit hampered because communications right at this point, after landfall, can often enter into a kind of dark side of the moon phase. Some Satellite Television trucks because of rain fade and high winds lose their ability to broadcast a signal. Even some Satellite Phones cant work. Cellphone service is down along with power. So well bring you reporting from it from our friends at the Weather Channel, from our own meteorologist bill karins, when we can. Now to the other news that is happening tonight. Somewhat under the cover of the first Natural Disaster of his presidency, a category 4 Hurricane Making Landfall in the united states, the president and
our white house stories, on the phone with us, our friend and colleague, the host of our 4 00 p. M. Hour here at msn
the vast majority stretching over 220 plus. severe wind gust reports. some of these the strongest hurricane wind gusts across areas of mississippi, kentucky, the state of tennessee as well. very strong wind gusts in praise with the storms. look at the lightning data. able to tabulate 106,000 lightning strikes and it speaks to the height of this. the weekend and it moves away off the eastern 1/3 of the u.s. notice quite a bit of rainfall observed here. flooding widespread whether it s arkansas, wisconsin, as far north as iowa. we ve seen as much as 5 plus inches come down. we ve talked about the tornadoes. the preliminary number puts us at 292. 80 is the beginning of march. almost matching what we expect in the entire month as we approach peak season. laura? pedram we know you are
the same storms are now moving into alabama and florida, and may bring more tornadoes there, too. pedram javaheri joins us with the forecast for the rest of the day. pedram, we have the north without power and the south seeing severe weather. the u.s. is battered on those two fronts there. it continues every single day. every region of the u.s. seeing significant weather and weather was the bomb cyclone across the western united states, the tornadoes we re seeing in portions of the southern united states, and of course the nor easter that just wrapped up as well. but take a look at this. upwards of ten reports of tornadoes just in the past 48 hours. almost 40 reports of severe wind gust reports. those are right around the plains region of the u.s., along parts of the gulf coast as well. that system responsible for all that severe weather. it is on the move. it is pushing in along the southeastern united states at this hour. the concern is we re going to see another line of active wea
far as the winds and the storm surge, you dodged that. this is as classic as it gets for a buzz saw hurricane. you can see the well-defined eye over the barrier islands and moving onshore. even though corpus christi is being spared, there are small port communities that will be devastated by these winds in the storm surge. one of them is rockport. this little peninsula here across from corpus christi has about 25,000 people that live here. it was all completely evacuated. there s a couple of storm chasers out here that have been showing their video. it s incredible, 120-mile-per-hour winds it s gusting up to. this is where the storm surge is at its worst through the peninsula here. further up the coast, this is all barrier islands. this is all a national refuge area, no population here at all. that s were the 130-mile-per-hour winds are, and no one lives there, so that s fantastic as far as that went. wind gust reports, we re losing our stations, some of the stations break, they just k
shapes. but i want to give you the wind gust reports first, we got in from the national hurricane center, wind gusts of 55 miles per hour in stewart florida. that is north of jupiter, forth of west palm beach. we have been watching this inner eye wall, and outer eye wall, the potentially eye wall replacement cycle which tends to indicate a strengthening hurricane, but as you look at this radar loop just in the past hour we ve already seen some changes. it looks i can loo tlike the in getting absorbed by the outer ring. this is about 60 nautical miles wide and that was taken by hurricane hunters. what is also interesting is it s a double-edged sword, whether or not when the storm comes closer to florida whether we are looking at the larger eye wall or the smaller one. inside the smaller one we are seeing the more intense winds.