gate shut and just look around. you want to be careful. >> we're entering the most dangerous person for sarasota right now. we're expecting the winds are going to peak around 10:00 p.m. eastern time. the 2:00 a.m. eastern time we are seeing a steady continuation of the conditions out here. wave after wave of wind and rain. it's gets worse by the minute. it's strange to think this is the best conditions that we are going to feel physical 2:00 a.m. in the morning. let me give you a sense of what we're seeing. it's an eerie scene. everyone is is taking shelter. but we have lost power a number

of times over the course of the past hour. we lost power three times with the street lights have gone out and lights from the store fronts have gone out. everything has been complete blackness. that's when you feel most vulnerable and like something could come barrelling out of the darkness. now we are starting to see some of that debrae. palms, branches, other things that could be picked up and used as projectiles in these winds. we're told by our own weather center that they are expected to peak around 80 miles an hour. they are going to maintain 80 miles an hour perhaps gusting up to 100 miles per hour. that's down a little bit from the highest expectation, the highest forecast because the eye of irma is not expected now to pass over sarasota. it's expected to pass 20 or 30 miles to the east and with that is more good news for sarasota.

the storm surge now expected to be around one to three feet. so we're told by by the city manager's office they are hoping to get emergency teams out before the dawn hours around 2:00 a.m. but there's a lot left in store for sarasota. the worst is yet to come. >> that would be very, very good news for sarasota. but just in terms of you have been covering this several hours. it's worse now than it was before. if you could reiterate what time you expect the worst of it to be, we have been told here in tampa for us it would really be starting around 11:00 or so. obviously, several hours from

now. sarasota being 50 miles south, i think you said it's going to be around 10:00. is that right? >> yeah, i'm having a hard time hearing you, but essentially what we're expecting is the peak to get reached in the next hour. so from 9:00 to 10:00 eastern time, we're expecting to get category 1 wind speeds. the speeds are expected to average around 80 miles an hour. they are expected to gust as high as possible. kp it was expected to pass straight over us giving us that brief. moment of calm we saw chris cuomo experience. we are not expected to see that now. the eye of irma expected to pass around 20 or 30 miles to the

east, so our peak winds will last from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and taper off after that. >> the amount of rain coming down right here in tampa is ridiculous. he's made the difficult decision. to pull officers off the streets. they are in staging areas. and they are going to go out as soon as this dies down. probably in the early morning hours tomorrow. or whenever in order to respond to whatever the most important 911 calls and emergency calls as they have received. also to try to clear whatever

roads need to be cleared. certainly for tampa in the ahead. two to three hours from now, if you could just stay there. i want to bring in tom sater. if you can for alex and everybody in this area, give us a sense of what is happening in sarasota. what's happening along the west right now. >> get ready for more rainfall. we have a pretty good band that it's going to be making into your area of tampa. you can see where sarasota is, we're looking at look the colors. but look at the orange on this close up radar. we continue to talk about the center, which really night now is 23 miles to the east/northeast. we still continue to see tremendous activity and downpours in that front right quad ron. it's in the bright orange and red. but it's fanning out to the north and off to the northwest. and then west. so these bands as the system continues to move north will

continue to slide in your direction. so definitely flash tlooding. fort meyers, 84 miles per hour. port charlotte, 79. tampa, 60. but also more haven. the edge of the screen, they are in a pretty good rain pattern as well. they have picked up ten inches and they are going to add to that. they have had a wind gust of 89 miles per hour. if you're quiet about lake okeechobee, the army corps of engineers says the levee should hol hold. let's move on to the next radar. it is quite interesting of what we're try ing ing to see here. first the severe weather, up south, they have picked up 14.5 inches and are in a serious flood situation as a heavy band of thunderstorms like the boxcar of a train is not producing

rainfall but severe weather. we have a thunderstorm cell producing a tornado moving in on the coast line. that was moving northwest at 74 miles per hour. it's a little unheard of. that's extremely fast. we hope that doesn't produce. we have a tornado warning southward in the melbourne area. notice what we have going on south of our eye and up to the north. i'm going to let this radar play in a little bit more. we have a giant dry slot that is starting to infiltrate the system. dry air will break the system down, but it's going to take awhile. this made landfall so we'd like to see dry air, but all the activity from the eye is now northward, which by the way continues to move north. as we move along and we're going to get a new track in a little while, look at the amount of color of red on this infrared

imagery. we like to see the colors shrink. that means you're losing the cloud tops and they are more concentrated around the center of the storm. the eye has closed up. it's just the fuel line has been cut off. but it's still trying to breathe. so as it takes a deep breath and trying to find moisture i would extend the tropical storm force winds and it's still kicking out the bands of rain. notice the bright colors off the northwestern flank makes its way offshore. our winds coming up into the tampa area are going to become due west. that's going to carry that water outward. let's take a look at a few more things. from the national hurricane center, what they have mentioned and we talked about a slight deviation to the east. maybe away from tampa for the time being toward maybe lake county and orlando.

they have made a statement saying they still believe that after the midnight hour, we're looking at more of a north/northwesterly track. that track seems to the west, but i'm going with the national hurricane center until we get more information. they are the best in the world. this continues to have that cone directly half off the coastline and half on. but our center point has changed somewhat. that's why it's going to be critical to watch and see what happens when the new track comes out a little while. we still have about 159 counties up in georgia under a state of emergency. significant rain bands will continue to feed in. that means a storm surge on the east coast will be significant. concerned about st. johns river in the jacksonville area and continue to have that wrap around surge below the storm. the system trying to breathe. it's been such a massive hurricane. it's going to take some time.

the winds are strong enough to do major damage, roof damage and downed pour lines. so we're not out of this yet. >> so because i can't see the radar track and what you're showing the viewers, but you talked about kind of an easterly move of this storm the last time we spoke. i'm not clear. is that still happening? i heard you also talk about a northwesterly track. >> any time these systems make landfall, you never know where the center is going to approach. and we saw that right off our landfall. we're looking a at that storm system that was almost moving a little bit to the north and then to the east. but again, this system is trying to get its act together. as it makes its way east, it is supposed to make its way back according to the national hurricane center toward 1:00 in the morning. i think it's going to be off to the east. it doesn't mean you're not going

to see significant gusts, but we're not taking the center of the storm right over you at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning. they are just saying overnight, expect it to move more northwesterly. currently it's moving due north, but the jog we had had in the last couple hours was a bit concerning. sometimes we feel like we're better forecasters ahead of the event. and we're still trying to catch up with this system and get one or two steps in front of it. >> i appreciate that. the bottom line that i take away from that, if it's moving northwest, even if the storm is to the east of tampa, it's bringing misery and that's only going to increase in the hours ahead. when you get into 11:00, 12:00, 1:00 a.m., for people to be worrying at 2:00 a.m. about storm surge, that adds insult to

injury ob top of the things like the loss of power. to have that worry about storm surge even if it is in the sarasota area one to three feet, sounds like it's potentially going to be lower than that here now. but at this point, there's still a lot of unknowns and variables. >> they were saying that if it was more than six feet, they were going to expect significant flooding. this is going to be a welcome bit of news. but this could do some damage. at the same time, there goes somebody that shouldn't be out here tonight. >> they are still expecting significant damage in the wake of this storm. they felt quite comfortable with their preparations for the

storm. and we have seen people getting out of town. we have seen people going to shelters. we have seen people hunkering down. they are not worried about getting hurt tonight. except for that one guy that just drove past. we have seen few people out here tonight. what they are worried about is what they are going to follow in the wake of this storm. with that surge, that means in all likelihood there's going to be less damage. but we could expect to see downed power lines and power out for days or weeks. the problem is theyen don't really know. theyen can't monitor what's happening because this storm is happening in the middle of the night. they have been hoping the way the storm was going that it would actually happen during the day and pass and get to go out and start assessing. now it's happening in the middle of the night as we were talking about before. we are expecting the winds to start subsiding around 2:00 a.m. around that time just before dawn, we are told they hope to start sending those emergency

teams out there to start doing the post storm assessment. >> alex, appreciate that. be careful. we'll check back with you shortly. still bad conditions. >> it may not look like it, but we have dodged a bullet here, at least for now. the wind has really picked up. we're getting some gusts i think it's a steady wind of 50 to 60. but the fact that the storm took that jog over to the west and east means we won't see the storm surge they were expecting. we have had fairly large power outage by the third of the area, third of the town is out of power. we did see a transformer that sign of a transformer blowing a short time ago.

that also happened. it looks like for the moment this town has dodged a bullet. back to you. >> that would be good news, but obviously when w that potential storm surge, because you have been seeing that water go out, you always don't want to predict what may happen with that. i think back to 2005 and folks in new orleans thought they had dodged a bullet and woke up with surges of water coming not to say that this storm for the area is going to be anything like that. but again, that phenomenon we have seen is just so surreal that you have been showing us all throughout the evening of the water receiving the same kind of thing we have been. seeing on the river. but to see it in the marina that you were in earlier was so strange. i just want to show the water

here, the rain on the water here just sweeping across. we have seen about three or four transformers light up the night sky over the last several hours. i assume first responders are. is it possible to move? is there debris on the ground? >> there is some debro. the newer trees, a lot of them have been uprooted in town. the storm surge they were expecting here because the eye has moved so far to the east the wind is not going to come around and push a lot of that water back up. so it looks like it will fill in more slowly and won't have that rush of water, that wave of water coming back in. so that will help keep things clear and make it passable here.

it will be another hour or so before we know how big the surge will be. we moved to higher ground just in the event it does come in higher. but the city itself truly seems to have be dealing with the storm quite well. the fact that charley came through here 13 years ago and destroyed much of the city, all those buildings that weren't in great shape were gone after charley. everything they built since is up to a better standard, better materials and certainly better construction. >> that's good news about that storm surge. thank you for that. i want to go to orlando. conditions there are worsening. >> they are getting a lot worse. we are definitely getting high winds. not so much to blow me over, but definitely high wind gusts.

so much so we know the orange county emergency services has suspended their services for the night into tomorrow. you can hear in my microphone the heavy wind gusts and i keep picking over to my right because when i talk to your left, i was talking about the globes that are around the lamp posts littering all of downtown orlando and one to my right is hanging by a thread. so i'm keeping an eye on that. i want to mention to you, as you were talking to tom, he mentioned the east coast having tornadic activity. i did confirm with the brevard county sheriffs department they had two tornadoes touch down. that's according to them. they have a lot of thodamage wi mobile home there is. so far, no injuries reported so that's good news. but they did have two tornadoes. it just kind of gives you the idea of how big this storm is because remember i was there

earlier this week. everyone there was preparing for the storm. then they said, it's not coming here. it's going to hit the west coast. we talked to a lot of people in orlando who then said, hey, i'm going to go home because we're not going to get hit. and now they are geting hit with different activity caused by the storm. it may not be the rain, but certainly they are getting hit. something just hit me in the head. pim a little nervous about this light so back to you. >> get out of that area and get sol shelter and we'll check in. a short break. more coverage from florida, we'll be right back. discover card. hey. what can you tell me about your new social security alerts? oh! we'll alert you if we find your social security number on any one of thousands of risky sites, so you'll be in the know. ooh. sushi. ugh. being in the know is a good thing. sign up online for free. discover social security alerts.

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welcome back. our continuing coverage of irma. i can't get over that sweep of the water.

the way this river has gone down so much throughout the day and still remains low despite the fact all this water pouring on it. the a of of storm surge is the variable. you heard the good news from miguel saying they are not expecting the storm surge in punta gorda, that's going to come back because they are not getting the winds coming back in. it's going to fill in more naturally and slowly. so that's good news there. they are saying in sarasota, they are expecting one to three feet of storm surge. so that's something to watch in the hours ahead. we'll know more of that in the late hours this morning. let's go to ryan young over in clearwater.

but it's still pretty bad where you are. >> the wind is sweeping you off your feet. if you have anything blocking you it changes the whole conversation. you don't hear as much as the wind. we have concrete surrounding us. and as soon as you get into the direction of the wind, it's brow tall on you. the wind keeps shifting. we were moving in a certain direction. now it's blowing that direction there. we have seen some of these cars almost like they are inching closer and closer together depending on the gusts. the real conversation here is when you have as much saturation and then you have trees. because that's a whole idea

here. sometimes it's the days afterwards when the trees will fall. the lights are still on in this area. what's dangerous is when people decide to come out outside and survey the damage what could happen then. it's best to wait until light. that was the benefit of what happened in miami because of the fact it was some sunshine outside. right now with this darkness, you really have no idea sort of what's coming in your direction or what's going on around you. so maybe the surge is getting worse in some places. but this wind we've been dealing with, it has been not only powerful but unrelenting in terms of the power we have been feeling and the forces right on cue. >> the other thing you don't think about in a storm like this is just the coast. for anybody -- that's another

one of those reasons that first responders are thankfully off the streets. if you're out in this rain, if there are homeless people out in the rain just over the hours, the accumulation of the rain hitting you it's impossible not to just start shivering and not feel it seep into your bones. it gets just very, very cold out here. >> that's the one thing that we felt the temperature drop. you talk about homeless people. we saw a few people trying to walk and beat the storm earlier. not sure their direction. this conversation, some people don't want to go to shelters. they would rather try to brave this themselves. but at the same time, people are making life or death decisions here. sometimes they are hoping to pray on god and avoid some of these situations. some people do not want to go to shelters. and i understand their thought process when it comes to that,

but the idea of being out here stuck in the storm for several hours and having to deal with this, ien couldn't imagine that. your heart goes out to those who make that decision. i'm going to step out and get dry for a little bit. we have that availability. but for other people, they might not have that experience and that's what you think about. i can tell you it's a long process to get your house back together and something you don't forget when you have hurricane damage. this is the kind of storm you forget about. you think about the storms in harvey. they are dealing with the aftereffects of the hurricane. you cover katrina so you know how this has a mental affect on people. there are some kids somewhere tonight hearing this wind hitting a house or maybe a tree hitting a house. they will never forget that sound. it's something when you live through a storm, like i said earlier, you'll mark your life by this storm.

this storm will never be forgotten by those who live in the area. because sometimes this is the most terrifying night you'll experience when you live in the state of florida. >> we talk about an area like perhaps sarasota not getting the kind of storm they had anticipated, obviously, any deviation of the storm can be good for one city, for one town, but it can mean tragedy for another town. we certainly saw that with charley back in 2004 when it was coming up. people thought it was going to make a direct hit on tampa. it was just a four-degree change. that means it hit and decimated punta gorda. the other thing about this storm and we have been covering this for days is the shear size of it is extraordinary. and we continue now even at this hour and this stage of the storm, we continue to get a sense of the size of it. the fact that we have reporters on the west coast where we are

here in tampa, but also still have reporters on the east coast. brian todd is still in west palm beach in the midst of the storm, still seeing bad conditions out there. wind and rain and let's check in with brian. how has it been? you have been on for how many hours and i'm just pointing that out just to give a sense of the length of the storm and the length of time people in miami and elsewhere have just had to deal with some level of hurricane irma. >> that's right. we have been on the air for 14 hours. this storm has been of this intensity for about nine hours. you mentioned punta gorda didn't get the storm they anticipated. palm beach got much more of the storm than they anticipated. palm beach county has just been pounded. unrelentingly by this wind.

the rain has ceased here, the wind has surgeonly not ceased. it's gone in a circular motion at times making it even more threatening. we saw three transformers blow up just a few yards away from us. an intense blast into the sky. so it's still very intense and dangerous here. there's so many projectiles flying. so our team has to be cognizant of that. what we can report to you from this county is that the intensity of the wind has prompted a rescue. and a pretty significant one. the mayor of palm beach county has told us that the stoney brook apartment complex in riviera beach had the roofs ripped off two apartment units of that complex. they had to get first responders in there in these conditions and

rescue at least 50 people. 50 people pulled out of those apartment units. he himself went over there along with the fire and police department and went door to door to get people out of there. luckily they got at least 50 people out and got them safely to a shelter, including several small children and there were no injuries. but again, the intensity of the wind, people think in this county they can ride it out and it's just been pounding for several hours and the people at that apartment complex thought it wouldn't last this long. it certainly did. this evening they had to be rescued. our message is clear. you can be arrested if. you're out here because of the curf curfew. they want people to stay inside, stay hunkered down and stay in shelters. this is just not letting up.

>> that's the message from the chief of police here in tampa, who i spoke to a short time ago. you. may think this isn't as bad as it might have been, but this is still a deadly storm. there's still a potential for ab awful lot of bad things to happen in the hours ahead. so please just stay at home, stay in the shelter you're in and just keep riding this out. you have gotten this far. just push through the night and let's get to tomorrow safely. we'll continue to check in with you. another short break. we'll be right back. (burke) at farmers, we've seen almost everything

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hey you've gotta see this. cno.n. alright, see you down there. mmm, fine. okay, what do we got? okay, watch this. do the thing we talked about. what do we say? it's going to be great. watch.

remember what we were just saying? go irish! see that? yes! i'm gonna just go back to doing what i was doing. find your awesome with the xfinity x1 voice remote. welcome back. our continuing coverage of hurricane irma. clearwater, stft petersburg, the worst is still yet to come in many areas around here. we have been showing you the

rain as it just kind of moving in sheets across the water. we're out of kind of a wind gust right now. but i want to show you, we're not too far from the university of tampa. they have lovely campus. you just see in the erie light on one of those buildings, it really lights up how much rain is falling all across this area. just moving in sheets, moving fast. this is a relatively fast moving storl. it was 14 miles per hour the last time we checked in with tom and we'll hear from him in a moment. but just one of the scenes. there's still power in this area. but as the chief of police was telling me, there's numbers of neighborhoods in tampa that are without power. 3 million people without power in florida. that was the last figure we got about an hour or so ago. let's bring in tom sater. 3 million customers without power, i should say in florida.

we have been talking about the kind of confusion about this storm. dissipation in some places, but an eastward movement, but also just kind of the uncertainty at this hour. i know we're going to get an update in the 11:00 hour, but it's going to be critical. a lot of people are going to be paying attention to that closely. as are emergency personnel. but where is this thing now? just give us an overview. >> it's northeast of punta go a gorda. we're still seeing some purple and that's the highest cloud top it's like a fighter that doesn't want to go down. it's still a formidable storm. i should mention to everybody when it comes to the atlantic hurricane season, september 10th is the peak historically and

statistically. so the environment you would expect it to be at its highest today. between august 7th and september 7th in that one-month period, we have had six hurricanes. this is the last. but here is a path and the track from the national hurricane center. i want to talk about what we're expecting at the 11:00 hour. we possibly will see a little bit of this center cone here slide eastward. and that's only because in the last couple of hours where the system is is now from where it made landfall, a little bit of an edge to the east, a little bit of a wobble wanting to trend and deviate toward the east. maybe toward lake county, keeping it maybe away from tampa somewhat tornado orlando. but the hurricane center still believes over the midnight hours, we'll see a northwestern movement. but when will that occur? that's why it's critical to keep an eye on this.

this is another model that continues to keep the eye pretty much over the entire western coastline. so again, the where the center is now, we expect it's more inland. this is kind of hard to believe at this point, but you get the general idea of still its strength, still its momentum, still the heavy amounts of rain which are still producing wind gusts at 90 miles per hour and that was earlier at the power plant. tornado watch has been extended northward. we still have tornado warnings. south of daytona beach on the coastline. again, heaviest rainfall has been there. melbourne toward kcocoa beach. you see where port charlotte is. as the bands move in, get ready because we have a few more heavy blinding bands of rainfall that will slide through your area

move iing through lakeland as w speak. it's this band that's offshore on the east coast that's producing some frightening flash floding that continues to make its way north of melbourne. >> is it still about 14 miles per hour? >> it is. significantly faster than it was yesterday when it was about 6 or 7. so again, that will add to the track when they take the speed, the center point, the possible movements with the steering currents, we're going to find our track a little more inland but that's not until 11:00 p.m. it's still producing enough winds to knock out more power to many more people. >> is it possible that the eye could reform sor it past that? >> it's pretty much past that. once it makes landfall, the eye, the core is closing up and more of a rain shaft. but it's still a center point, which is is still the

cornerstone of all of its energy. so until we get a little bit further north in the state, that's where it will run into some winds that are higher aloft and should start sheering the system apart. it's not going to get. until you until 1:00 in the morning and continue. right now your winds are west so the water should be getting shoved out away from the bay and coastline. and when this system is north of you, you're still going to get the wrap around winds that will put the storm surge back up into the bay. it's still dangerous on many levels. >> i appreciate that, tom. that 11:00 update is going to be incredibly important. let's go to orlando. 3 million customers without power. fema administered yesterday say ing some folks could be without power for weeks. what do you make of this? what's on your top ten list of

concerns here? >> number one, some of those grids could have been taken down out of caution to prevent the continuous blowing of the tmplers. the more they blow, the longer it's going to take to get the grid back up. it doesn't look like we lost any distribution lines yet. where you're standing there just a few miles away if you lock to the east, you'll see a power plant. that's tampa electric company. you go a few miles to the north and you'll see the river nuclear power plant. so you have a good base to switch power back and forth. if the distribution lines stay up, we're going to be in good shape. the newer part of the city is going to have lights. probably out in the subu subdivisions, those will go down because the service lines will start to come down with the wind. that being said, there's two

points there that i'm concerned about. right near you where you're standing is the tampa bay public hospital. >> it's just down there. >> that surge could get to the first floor of that hospital and that could be what impact if the nuclear power plant start taking water, will they be able to discharge. those are the big concern. on the other side of that, i want to tell you last week we spoke about the organic nature of how the search and rescue was done. i thought we were slow in deploying ships. they were not notified to deploy until after landfall. what a difference a storm makes.

we got the entire atlantic fleet led by the aircraft areaier that's leading the search and rescue mission. as well as do a grid system. it's organized. they are coming in big. the army committed 9,000. troops. and 3,000 trucks standing by to come to florida. so the effects of the change in one storm, they have leaned forward and troops are on the way and the ships are following this storm in. we should see the first light tomorrow morning going into key west. >> that will be a welcome sight for a lot of folks in key west. the damage is still trying to be assessed. very difficult to do it now that darkness has come. general, appreciate your perspective. another short break. our coverage continues in just a moment. you can see exactly when we'll arrive.

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i'm covering now for anderson cooper. he's having some technical issues. anderson has been there for all day covering it. tom sater has been in the weather center. reporters have been all over the area. we're having signal issues. we're still covering this major hurricane. we're working as hard as we can to get. anderson back up. as you have been seeing, it came ashore at a magnitude 4 and dwindled to a 3 and now 2 and it's going to. happen in just a bit. we're going to get to alex who has been covering this for us in

sarasota about 15 miles south of where anderson is getting battered there. so what are you seeing there? what's going on where you are? >> we're starting to get battered as well. we are about 50 miles south of where anderson is. we have watched what happened to our teams in miami and naples and fort meyers as this storms comes up the coast. right now at 10:00 p.m., we are entering what will likely be the most dangerous period for sarasota. we are expecting four hours of peak winds. let me give you a sense of what we're seeing here. i'm going to pull this cable with me. the main rod that has been to downtown sarasota has become a wind tunnel. all evening we have seen the winds just -- rain which comes in gusts. at its worst, it feels like little bugs stinging your the past few hours, power going in, going out, coming back on.

right now you can see that there are streetlights that are still on. the storefront lights are still on. also, what kind of debris is coming down? so far we're hearing from the city and seeing ourselves that it's not too bad. i'm just going to show you what exactly we're seeing out here. this is the kind of thing, these palm fronds are falling off the trees. once the wind kicks up, they start to sail and they can actually do some damage. what we're hearing in terms of the forecast is that starting now at 10:00 p.m., we'll start seeing hurricane-force winds. those winds will average around 80 miles an hour. going all the way up in terms of gusts to around 100 miles an hour. that's a category 1. the eye of irma, we have learned in the past hour, is not going to pass over sarasota. it is going to the east about 20 or 30 miles east of sarasota.

so, to some extent there is a bit of a bullet being dodged here by the city. we understand that the storm surge prediction has also been corrected from 3 to 6 feet to around 1 to 3 feet. but as weave seen over the course of the past few days, these forecasts, these predictions change dramatically in just a few moments -- just a few hours. it remains to be seen what will happen in the coming hours. but what we do know is the most intense period is starting right now, don. >> alex, thank you very much. i appreciate that. let's get back now to anderson. we've got that signal back up. i knew i was going to take over at the top of the hour but i didn't expect it to happen this quickly. >> yeah, we were surprised. it wasn't a particularly bad period, although now, frankly, in the last two minutes or so, as we were listening to alex, we're getting a big gust right now. you can really see it. look at that water. i'm just fascinated by this shot.

if jay can just push in on it. this is the hillsborough river, which is down really probably about 10 feet from what it was earlier today. but it is just getting swept with wave after wave, sheet after sheet of just this driving rain, which is now in some ways moving almost horizontally. not as much. you see at the height of a hurricane. alex, who's about 50 miles south, was saying the worst is about to be in sarasota in the noection ho next hour or so. we are not looking at the worst until two or three hours from right now. we are, of course, going to bring all of that to you as it happens. i want to go to brynn gingras who is in orlando who has been seeing -- that's the thing about this storm, don, all of florida is seeing this storm, all of florida is being affected. to lesser or greater degrees.

brynn, how are things in orlando? >> reporter: anderson, everyone came to orlando to escape the coast because they were worried about their homes. now we're getting really hammered with some sort of weather at this point. like i said, in the last hit we weren't -- we're not getting a sustained heavy winds. we're getting strong wind gusts. that's just enough to get things really churning on the streets here. we've seen street lamps come down. we've seen a lot of debris. we also know that at this point because the wind gusts have been so strong, that emergency crews have stopped -- they suspended their efforts to help anybody out. a curfew went into effect for this county, orange county, at 7:00. it's not listed until 6:00 tomorrow. and there's a reason for that, of course, is to get everybody off the streets. we did see a few people a little earlier. now it seems like everybody has gone inside. they're definitely taking cover at this point as we're seeing the storm pick up. we do expect its worst, though,

to be at 12:00. we still have several hours of this. anderson? >> several hours for a lot of different parts of the state. let's go to ryan young in clearwater to the west of this -- i'm sorry, let's stay with brynn. we'll try to check in with ryan in a short time. in terms of getting around in orlando, how does this compare with what people were expecting? >> reporter: well, i don't think they were expecting to see these major wind gusts. just a few hours ago, anderson, we saw people coming out. we are staying at a hotel filled with animals because all the hotels in the area, you have to remember, this is orlando, of course, this is a resort town. 100,000 rooms were available for people who needed to evacuate. all those hotels filled up in addition to shelters. so, people really taking cover at this point in those shelters they came here for, anderson.

>> brynn, appreciate that. i want to go to ryan young, who is in clearwater. ryan, just west of where we are now. we've been getting big gusts just in the last five or so minutes. how are things there? >> reporter: the wind gusts continue to pick up here. we're just south of the airport. you can really feel the swirl coming through. i want to say earlier on we thought they were maybe 20 to 30-mile-per-hour wind gusts but talking to our weather department, we've been experiencing as much as 60 to 65 miles per hour wind gusts. we can see wind gusts flying all over the area. the power has not been shut off. we haven't seen damage to any roofs in the nearby area. anderson? >> ryan, just in terms of the worst, i mean, obviously the next two or three hours, that's probably when -- you know, preefl we've been told in this

area would be around 11:00. the way the storm is dissipating, it's hard to know. what are you expecting in terms of when the worst is going to be? >> reporter: one of the things we want to talk about. one, we have a bunch of lights on us to show the area. in other areas it's very dark around this -- around what we're dealing with. people shouldn't go outside to see what's going on. that's first. we know emergency responders have been pulled off the road because of the wind gusts. if you need help at this point, have you to shelter in place and for it to pass. a lot of people are worried about the next few hours because we know the strength of the storm still has a little punch left in it and it could linger for quite some time. this rain and wind has been going on for quite a few hours. at this point the only thing we've seen is sign damage. we haven't seen any significant damage to any buildings or got any calls about any major outages at this point. we do know there have been some downed trees. not sure if any hit any homes at

this point, anderson. >> appreciate that. when it starts to get to a storm like, this it's almost hard to hear. your ears get filled up with water, so i couldn't hear some of what ryan was saying. we'll try to get that cleared up so i can talk more to him. we'll take a short break as our coverage continues here from all across florida. we'll be going all through the night to bring you the late es of this storm. also, importantly, what happens tomorrow when light breaks. we'll be right back.

going to be facing, but we're going to be closely tracking this over the next hour. especially once we get that -- the new advisory that we're expecting at the 11:00 hour to really get a sense of what tampa has in store aned in the early morning hours in particular. i want to hand things over -- our coverage continues with don lemon on "cnn tonight" and don will take it throughout the next several hours and skaul our correspondents continuing to coverage this. don, we have people all over florida. it really does, don, give you a sense of just the size of this storm, the lengt