have your safety first and foremost. 12 hours ago will karins and i sat down to cover this storm without really a road map. the amazing thing is how vital, how powerful, dangerously power and unpredictable this still is. this is a storm that has sent ocean waters out of bays. it has made rivers run the wrong way and prior to getting here it has left island territories unable to support human life. if you watch any hockey at all you know they have shifts. they have the next shift that comes in over the wall. the next shift to come in over the wall as our coverage continues throughout the night is a guy who has come over the wall for me several times, my friend ali velshi. >> get some rest because this is going to go on for a while. hurricane irma is not done with florida, not by a long shot. it's continuing to batter the

state with heavy rain, high winds and dangerous flooding. >> al, was this squall line part of your forecast earlier tonight? >> oh, yes. we are just getting into this. >> this rain is hitting me. >> why don't you get under the overhang. >> the storm is about an [ inaudible ] 400 miles wide. we will feel it everywhere. >> wow. i got to say, guys, this is the strongest. in fact, i'm just going to take a knee for a second. it's kind of like exhausting to stand there for a little bit. >> i want to bring in meteorologist right now because we have the newest update. what is happening with this storm? >> we still have a strong storm out there. it has only gotten larger.

we heard about tropical storm force winds 400 miles from the center. this storm is just getting going for our northern neighbors. northward up through georgia and south carolina where the storm surge is still yet to come in. flooding, damaging winds still on the table here and the tornado threat, as well, as we go through the overnight hours. >> what's the situation as it relates to tampa? we have been wondering whether this thing will bob and weave, whether storm surges will be as dangerous. >> things are looking a little better. we have a surge going on but numbers have been revised downward. we are not going to see epic storm surge amounts. now between three, four, five, six feet which is about a moderate storm surge. it will cause some damage. there will be definitely some property inconveniences there. we are not looking for that far inland inunidation of water.

>> good news because we didn't think it was on the gulf coast of florida at all. then it moved to the gulf coast and everybody's concerns went to the highly populated areas around clearwater, st. petersburg, tampa. >> the southern side didn't work out. when it came north of cuba there was sheer, interaction with land. that is what saved us here. that southern sid of the storm system was weaker. we have the northern side and plenty of damage to talk about. thankfully it wasn't as catastrophic but the keys we still don't know yet. >> in the middle of florida on the east coast even though the hurricane didn't go in that direction there were damaging winds, tornadoes. in the middle of florida there is activity. i want to bring in katie in orlando, florida. she is going to show up in one of these. katie, that's kind of remarkable. i saw you on tv and i said what is going on? why is it so windy and rainy in the middle of the state? >> reporter: well, we are now officially in the center of the

storm. we have been waiting all day. the weather has been pretty mild here in orlando. the theme parks have been a ghost town. the roadways have been completely empty and the hotels have been packed with evacuees. there is not a single parking space to be had at any hotel in lant laboratory, i mean orlando. it is really eerie when basically all theme parks are empty and hotels are full. the winds we are seeing now are anywhere between 80 and 85 miles per hour. those are sustained winds here in orlando. we are really getting the brunt of this storm here in central florida. i think the big concern now is about tornadoes because of the winds being so strong there is a huge threat. there has been throughout the day. and most of central florida is under a tornado warning if not a serious threat at this point. >> we are going to stay close to you in orlando. in the middle of the state where people have been trying to figure out where in florida to

go because when we thought this storm was hitting the east coast a lot of people from the atlantic coast went to the gulf coast and then people in the gulf coast realized it was hitting them and orlando is right in the middle of this thing. this is an interesting place for things to happen. of course, the attention remains on tampa. as much as those storm squalls, those storm urge surges are not as serious as we thought, tampa has a lot of low lying area around it. i want to go to thomas roberts in tampa. he has been there since it first started to rain and get windy. what are the conditions in tampa right now? >> so it has been getting increasingly bad throughout the night. earlier this evening we had a different position to move from because of safety concerns because of the high gusting winds that had been coming through as we are down along the river. you can see how much the activity along the river has

changed over the last several hours. not only dayou see driving sheets of rain pouring down. here at this area you see a lot of beach and a lot of folks we were speaking to said this is really odd because they have never seen this much exposed rock or beach before. part of this was because at the end of the river itself which empties into tampa bay they emptied some of this river to be able to put up with a lot of storm issues from the rain water they were going to get and from the storm surge that they would get from irma. they expect the surge of water to come back in and that could bring about five feet of water almost eight feet of water for certain areas here in tampa and st. pete. we spoke earlier with our colleagues at the nbc affiliate here in tampa who informed us that as of their last reporting they were able to hear 1.3 million people in the area are reporting outages right now.

we know that on pinellas county they had evacuated that part of the state and then closed the bridges so they are not letting people back in. there are some people there that did take shelter in what the state and local officials had provided. here we know there are roughly about 30,000 people in shelters. if you take into account what people in the south part of the state in miami and then over to southwest florida down in marco island and then up to where we are in tampa, the amount of power outages that people are facing right now in this state are in the millions, double digits most likely. we will have more accurate numbers about that. we were hearing from bill earlier the fact that this storm system is affecting all the way up to delaware if you think about that down the eastern shore line in the coastal portion of the peninsula of florida and back into the gulf to where we are almost to the panhandle.

it is amazing to think and we are not really in the full effect of irma yet because we have to get through the eye wall and what they call the dirty side even though the fact that the storm has been over land is a good thing because it has absorbed a lot of energy although irma doesn't seem to be over it yet in terms of what forces she wants to bring certainly to tampa right now. look at this. it is amazing to look at how fast this is moving in terms of the water. sometimes it looks more ocean-like. the fact that this water is pouring in and it is almost as if a rip current of curling is creating. we'll keep you posted. again, the big number, though, north of 1.3 million people reported without power right now. so we'll get more information for you and get back to you when we learn about it. the winds are whipping. >> a lot of people were talking about power outages in florida, the numbers provided by fpl are not in the region you are in. these are extra people without

power, more than we have been talking about otherwise. we talked to the mayor earlier who said they are trying to do what they can. the expectations are with this kind of storm that power will be lost. to your point the dirty side of the storm is when your storm surge is going to come in. the good news is that storm surge if we can judge based on examples in marco island what you might have is a much lower storm surge than expected. we are looking at two to four feet. that would be okay because the evacuation areas would be all right to be out of those areas. we are waiting for that. you haven't gotten the worst of it yet. we'll come back to you. >> you can see the sheets pouring in. the surge has not come back. we will keep you posted if we start to see this coming up. >> thomas roberts thank you in tampa. i want to stick in tampa because that is where the next major population center for the storm to hit is.

i want to go to lester holt and al roker who i saw about 20 minutes ago in a different part of tampa. they looked like they were holding on to each other like old buddies. what is the situation now? >> the wind has actually died down in this area. >> this is going to go in waves as it comes as irma makes her way up about 50 miles southeast of here. the good news is with this northerly track as opposed to it being to the northwest we are not on the northeast quadrant of this storm. so while we are going to get buffeted with pretty good winds, the worst of it is not going to be in tampa. but, in fact, to the east of tampa. that's why orlando is getting buffeted and battered because they are on the northeast quadrant of this thing. >> it's critically important because we were talking earlier in the day when we were

expecting to get hit with something as strong as a 3 here reminding folks in 2010 they had fema in the city of tampa and worked together on a simulation of a large cat 5 hurricane. i think they nicknamed it hurricane phoenix and the results were jaw dropping. 2,000 dead, half a million homes gone. there was great concern, the vulnerability of the shore line and a lot of issues that make it a very vulnerable city. that's why the mayor was really trying to make a point that they are going to ride it out and hope for the best. the fact that we are not going to get the northeast quadrant. >> go ahead. >> al, what is the significance of not being in the northeast quadrant as it relates to what thomas was saying? the dirty side of the storm? you are going to get water

pushing in from the ocean when you get past the eye but not as much power behind it? >> when you talk about when you look at the system it's a counter clockwise system. so you have that flow going into the circulation so if you are on that northeast quadrant you are on the strongest side. that's where the real strength lies. so with that system being to the right, if you will, of tampa, we are not in that. as it pulls up even and then moves to the north of us we get that return flow and that's when you are going to get the storm surge thankfully a much lower storm surge at two to four feet. that's a little bit less than moderate and tampa can handle that. >> we should note we are getting an awful lot of rain here. it has been coming down in sheets, very heavy rain. >> it hurts, actually. >> i understand.

>> you guys are getting a lot of rain and getting gusts every now and then when you are reaching out to steady yourselves. but maybe we just lost that -- there's that much rain. we will get back to these two guys. they're good. these guys have a future in tv. i want to go to the mayor of st. petersburg who is standing by. we are looking at a better story for you in st. petersburg, mayor. what is your view of how things are going. tell me what your situation is with power right now? >> we are looking at a better story than 24 hours ago. we are still at this point taking on pretty heavy winds. we expect in a little over an hour and a half to have sustained winds in the 80 to 85 mile range with gusts upwards of 100 miles. we have some of the same concerns that my friends across the bay in tampa have with the storm surge.

we know that that is going to come when these winds push past us. at the same time we have a high tide those things along with the rain we are getting give us a lot of concern for our residents that live in some of our low lying neighborhoods. we also have about power outages somewhere around 300,000 that duke energy is reported and they are our energy provider. a lot of power outages and downed trees. a lot of homes inpacted by the storm. >> this is st. petersburg over here. we are looking at reduced storm surge into st. pete two to four feet. mayor, two to four feet is still of concern. what sort of infrastructure issues are you worried about in st. petersburg? we discussed with mayors changes made after hurricane donna and andrew to the point that most new construction is such that it

can handle what you have seen. are there particular infrastructure concerns in the city, bridges, dikes, dams you are worried about? >> not so much of that as we have a number of neighborhoods that are really low right at just barely above sea level. even when we get medium to heavy rains there tends to be significant flooding in those neighborhoods. when you take those neighborhoods that are already and historically been at risk and you have the kind of rain we are getting and add high tide and add two to four foot storm surge the impact it will have on these homes is going to be significant. in some ways that is our biggest concern. that is partly why the county that we are in issued an evacuation order as early as they did because we wanted to get people that were in zone as and zone bs out as quickly as we

could to put them at minimal risk. you can replace homes but you can't replace people. >> absolutely. mayor, have you got -- are the winds too high for you to have any emergency services out right now? are they hunkered down? >> they are. we are hoping that sometime early tomorrow morning we'll get winds that will dip below 40 miles per hour. once we do that then we can get our folks out and start the recovery process of making sure that anyone who didn't evacuate and is in need of assistance can get it right away. >> our thoughts are with you through the course of the night. we will be up all night. we wish you the best of luck. i want to show you on the map of florida right now there are still hurricane force winds and gusts in the area of miami. it is settling down dramatically now. the course of the storm did end up steering fairly clear of there. we just saw what happened in orlando with catie beck. up next our special coverage continues. we will go back to miami where

flooding is now the big concern in many parts of that city. our full coverage continues after this. you are watching msnbc.

this came off one of the palm trees to the east of me. and i'm not going to let go of it because i can fly around. probably weighs about 25, 30 pounds and snapped off. you can see the wind. it's just really hard. this is the kind of projectile

that can be a real danger in a hurricane. rather than let it fly across here i went and picked it up and held it. i will just dump it in a place where the wind isn't. this is the real danger in a hurricane with things flying around. >> that is kerry sanders who has watched this thing go from clear skies into the hurricane that you were watching. maya rodriguez is in miami. the worst of it is over in miami. now we are looking at the after effects and the debris and looking at flooding. this is a city that has a flooding problem because of rising sea levels sometimes on sunny days have water coming up through the storm sewers. what is the situation in terms of flooding in miami? >> reporter: now it's a city that has a storm surge problem. we are in downtown miami and the bay is a few blocks east of us. that water came on up. you can take a look we are walking around and it is kind of

murky and quite dirty. some of the good news we have been out here for a few hours now. the water has receded. it was back at the traffic light back there. now all the way back here. that is some of the good news. we have had people thinking twice about going through this particular intersection. they are like we are just not going to do it. they have been going here, doing u-turns making their way back out just backing up because they don't want to deal with all of this. this was a serious problem. we had about a four foot storm surge here. the good news is it is receding. high tide is at 12:39 this morning. so we are going to see if that has any effect on this water that is receding or if it will put a stop to that. like you mentioned that could be a big deal here. when you have unusually high tides in the area the water does come up and flood certain sections of miami beach, of coconut grove here in miami. something that we are definitely keeping an eye on as we get closer to the midnight hour.

>> i know you have to stay in a relatively limited area. is there much debris around? >> yeah. you know, we have palms. these things you heard it earlier when we came back from break. they are pretty heavy. this is really heavy. there is a lot of this down. obviously, there is a huge ctre canopy in miami. there are a lot of tree limbs and branches down. as far as glass, that's what we were looking for because there has been a massive building boom in miami and we have not seen that amount of glass that we saw after hurricane wilma when a lot of windows blew out. it tells me maybe those hurricane tempered windows did work. so we'll have to see. from what we have observed a lot

of buildings windows appear to be intact. >> excellent news for the recovery in miami. thanks very much. we'll be covering that story over the next 24 hours to see once the sun comes up what kind of damage there is all over the place. i want to go back to the gulf coast of florida to the areas that are still going to get the hardest part of the storm. i want to bring in george, the mayor of clearwater, florida. mayor, we have seen the new forecasts indicating that the storm surge going into clearwater will be less than we had seen earlier. that's good news. the storm itself is a little off to the east of you. that is good news. what are you worried about right now? >> right now we are worried that people will get too overconfident and decide to wander outside before we have been able to secure the streets to make sure that it is safe, that power is back on, that there is no power lines down and

that the storm surge in effect has been reduced. wie we evacuated all of our beach communities from clearwater to st. pete beach on friday. hotels cooperated and visitors left. we are in good shape from that standpoint. we feel extremely blessed compared to how we were looking at this storm earlier this morning. >> mayor, let me ask you, you have been cooperating with the mayors of tampa, with the mayor of st. petersburg, with the sheriffs. you have largely been lauded for that degree of cooperation getting on this early and getting people out as quickly as you can. that's always very helpful that you have people out of the way of disaster. this point the winds are too high for you to be rescuing folks or going out and seeing what is going on. tell me what you know about the situation in clearwater right

now in terms of power and debris, things like that. >> reporter: right now we were looking at having 150 miles per hour winds and possibly a category 3 or category 4 storm. we are getting gusts maybe up to 100 miles per hour now. that's a substantial difference. it's not the sustained winds that we thought had the storm stayed on that earlier course this morning. we have closed down our beaches so i can't give you an assessment as to what is going on on the beach in terms of beach erosion. i would imagine it is rather substantial. our residents have cooperated and evacuated. governor scott has done a super job in alerting all floridians from one end of the state to the other to heed warnings of law enforcement officials. hats not only to the governor and to all of our volunteers and law enforcement and first

responders, but also to their families who are alone while we're trying to do the business of keeping our whole community safe and the recovery efforts that will take place afterwards. >> thank you very much for being with us and what you have done for clearwater. we are keeping a close eye on this over the course of the next few hours. thank you, sir. next we go to tampa where wind and rain are beginning to increase. we will continue on the story on the other side of this break. you are watching full coverage here on msnbc.

hurricane irma is churning up with devastating category 2 force and sustained winds of 100 miles per hour. the eye of the storm passing along southwestern florida slamming naples on its way towards cities like fort myers, tampa, sarasota. at one point during the day water levels in naples increased by seven feet in just 90 minutes. this as residents in those cities all the way up to the state's capital of tallahassee are bracing for the storm. we have been covering this for a long time. the storm isn't even half way done through florida. flooding has begun in miami as surging storm waters has pushed into the financial district. flood waters on major streets throughout the city are

developing white caps. we just heard from maya rodriguez that some of that seems to be receding but miami will hit high tide in about one hour. we don't know what effect that will have whether there will be more flooding in the streets or less. florida has a flooding problem. miami has a particularly serious flooding problem. irma's winds brought down a construction crane in miami causing to collapse into a high rise building. it sort of bent over and went down. fortunately the area was desserted. more than 3.3 million people have reportedly been left without power. irma remains biggest evacuation effort in american history. i want to bring in the acting director of the national hurricane center. good to see you. this is hard to make sense of to people. on a lot of levels it took a route that was not as devastating as it could have been and it lost a little bit of

power and the storm surges weren't as serious. yet we just went to catie beck in orlando and we see something that looks like a horrific storm. how do you characterize this storm? >> when you start with a category 5 hurricane you have to weaken it quite a bit before you can diminish impact significantly. what was good news for florida was not so good news for cuba when incenter passed over that country for more than 12 to 24 hours. it did weaken the hurricane. rather than having category 4 conditions or 3 conditions into, say, the tampa area, we are talking more about a category 1 to 2. another benefit of the track was that it moved inland over florida and came up the peninsula rather than along the shore line. that's allowed the hurricane to weaken even further. >> that's kind of interesting because while it hits more

population centers than it would have if it had gone over open water the bottom line is each town that it hits makes it a little bit better for the town north of it in this particular case. in the end st. petersburg, clearwater, tampa will have a little easier time of it because fort myers and naples took a little brunt of it. >> and it is even more than that. that is true for the wind cht what we are always concerned about for hurricanes is the storm surge. if the hurricane had come up offshore as it would have passed very strong west winds would have occurred and blown the water ashore for the very tall storm surge. that is partly why we are not getting such a high surge thmpt center is inland and weakened. we don't have as much of a flow coming into it. the winds are less over land and by having a lower wind we actually have quite a bit lower storm surge, as well. we were fortunate in a number of ways. >> thanks to all of you at the

national hurricane center for your help in predicting this and helping people get out of harm's way. at the national hurricane center. i want to go to jamie from nbc 6 miami who is currently in tampa, florida. every time i go back to a shot i saw you a little while ago with brian. it looks different in tampa. what are we at now? >> reporter: we are just really getting dumped on. a lot more rain and wind. i have this windometer here. just dropped my hotel key. i am trying to gauge it. it is taking about 15 seconds to get a good gauge. it is stuck 22.6 miles per hour. it feels much stronger. we know there have been recorded 85 miles per hour winds sustained. i want to show you what is happening. we are getting some water build up on the streets. over here at the hilton a lot of guests are staying here.

evacuations are a huge deal. a lot of people seeking shelter and i know some hotels are completely overbooked. i want to point out that there is power not just generator power but looks like power for much of downtown is still going on. let me go ahead and show you as we go walking into the wind it is really hard. once we get to the intersection without the protection of the buildings the wind really begins to pick up. you might be able to hear if i put my microphone into the wind so you can get a better idea of it. notice the difference now once we lose the protection of the buildings in between us. it's just really whipping really hard. it's coming down on us. it comes and goes in waves and it really does knock the breath out of you. there are so many people right now without power. downtown tampa seems to be unaffect unaffected. even though the worst of it is about to begin a little after midnight and it is not as strong

as a hurricane as we once thought it was going to be, there is also the good news it is still a monster storm and the news that the storm surge is not going to be as high but still it is a big concern. >> sorry we caused you to lose your hotel key. if you need us to call someone to get a replacement we will be happy to do that. you were showing us the windometer. i guess buildings did protect you because the wind got a lot more fierce. steve, you are looking at winds in tampa gusting as high as 62 miles per hour. what you feeling there makes sense. show us that. >> the storm is almost parallel to him. he is getting that due east wind right now. as the storm circulation moves north you start to get that wind in off the gulf. we have lowered projections for the storm surge. you have the 60 miles per hour wind. it will be funneling in the water. it won't be coming in at the speeds that we thought if the

storm would have stayed a little bit offshore. >> back to jamie because i feel like i'm going to lose him in a sea of something. >> we are just trying to -- it's really picked up. i'm not going to bother with that windometer. >> trying to walk into this. can you hear me? i can't hear in my ear. if you are talking to me i don't know what you are saying. it has really picked up. i am trying to hold myself into the wind. it just comes in bursts like that. now it's not as bad. maybe we should probably get out of this particular area. my photographer is having problems with making sure we keep our equipment dry because if we don't we won't get the news for you. >> the low lying areas, area a in tampa, that's what the mayor wanted everybody evacuated from. those are the areas that really touched the water.

do you have a sense that most people in the most dangerous areas are out? i do see people in the hotel near you. are people largely evacuated or have you seen people around? >> reporter: there's nobody out here but us. from what i can tell when we tried to look for hotels we knew the storm was coming up here. let me help out here. from what we could tell so many people were trying to get rooms. we saw sold out all online. i spoke with people in hotel rooms. some were in miami trying to escape hurricane irma and ended up here and still in her path. there were people who were local who decided to get hotel rooms. i spoke to some students from tampa university out on the beach yesterday but they had no worries because they have a pretty good shelter inside tampa

university. every time the wind goes up. sorry about that. >> that is outside of your control, jamie. i understand that. we are going to let you seek shelter and we will come back to you in a little while to see how things are developing. all eyes are on tampa, st. petersburg and clearwater right now. we are not expecting it to be as bad as we initially thought. steve, just to be clear on this, this is not as catastrophic as we thought it was going to be. the storm surge and the winds but that is a serious storm that tampa is going to get. the storm surge numbers are lower. the inland wind potential, a lot of you in the central florida area remember charlie that knocked down a ton of trees. this is what this is doing right now. this is the northern part of the eye wall. it is moving to the north into the orlando area. you are going to get into that fierce wind along the corridor right now and that will move right to the north here.

this damaging wind line treat it like a line of severe thunderstorms south to north. i think the tree damage potential is really high here. so if you haven't lost power here north of i-4 you are probably going to lose it here tonight. it is just rocking and rolling and we have to watch out for the tornado threat, too. we have the right front quadrant of the storm so it is in these bands that come in off the ocean. you get these quick spin ups and that is what gets us in trouble with the brief tornadoes that we have had through the day today in much of florida. >> put that map, can you show me where sarasota is on there. we will go south from the area we have been talking about. we will bring that up right now. south of tampa. tampa, braydenton. sarasota most of the storm has passed sarasota at this point. i want to go to stephanie standing by in sarasota. what is the situation there right now?

it should be relatively calm compared to what you had earlier. >> thanks for having me. surprisingly it hasn't been as bad as we expected. we were thinking this would be awful. we get the dirty side of it and we have been so fortunate that we have had strong winds and getting strong winds. our bays have receded. manatees have been beached. trees are coming down. pool cages are starting to collapse but nothing so catastrophic that we were prepared for. i was so thrilled and pleased with our town. we are known for the barrier islands. this is the first time. i am 41. i was born here. i grew up here. none of my contemporaries and my mom grew up here, none of us

have boarded up. none of us have ever had to truly evacuate. we have never gone to these extremes to get batteries and ply wood and sand bags and rush for anything to cover your windows. >> let me just ask you -- i have video that you shot that you have given us. i have that running on screen. we saw something that looks like a greenhouse. is that your home? >> that's my personal back porch. the patio back there. everybody has their patio furniture inside. we pulled everything in. i don't have a step up there so the sand bags are there. my house is boarded up. i'm at my parents house because they are in zone d which is higher than zone c where i live you. >> you are not calling me from the place i have on the screen right now? >> correct.

the footage earlier is from where i am now. and i know i think the biggest thing with this being that this weather event so personal for me the thing that i have noticed the most is the word for evacuation i think there is misconception on that word. i think people on the heels of harvey people were so scared. we didn't know. authorities were saying we could expect this on the water, as well. but evacuation doesn't mean flee the state. i think people often -- somebody says what are you doing down there get north. i will take you in. often it means get to higher ground or get to a strong structure. i'm at my parents house because they have a new roof, hurricane doors, hurricane windows. they have a pool cage that is miami dade rated.

i am in a room i can't hear the storm. this is a huge testament to the windows and doors that truly work. >> you said miami dade rated. you are talking 145, 150 miles per hour wind rated. even in tampa the mayor was saying you don't have to leave the city. leave low lying zones, area a. you have letter classifications. it's about being wise about it. are you somewhere higher than is in a structure that can withstand a hurricane. >> correct. and are you prepared? don't go out. usually long time ago we used to throw hurricane parties and surf. storms have changed. katrina put hurricanes on the map. harvey reminded us of that. this state did not take it lightly. and the fact that we are only about 150 miles wide and 450

miles long, this storm eclips us. so we had to get ready. >> i think you are right that harvey did have an impact on people and the consistency of message. i know people get angry at me when i say this. we had the governor saying one thing and mayors saying different things. in florida there was a consistency of message get to safety and get out if you are in a dangerous place. thanks for the pictures you sent us and our thoughts are with you as the storm passes over you and carries on north of you. we will be right back. our coverage of hurricane irma continues after this break.

our friends at the weather channel are battling the violence of hurricane irma to

bring you the latest information. here is a sample of what they have been dealing with. >> 10:15 a.m. and the wind is battering us here in downtown miami. hurricane forcedmiami. we've had hurricane-force wind gusts and look at the angry bay. we've also got structural damage on the pier. i think some of this walkway is beginning to cave in here. >> reporter: we've got about 2 1/2 feet of water in the street, and it goes all the way around here. i don't know how far it goes. earlier it was down about two blocks but the surge has come up higher with these persistent winds. the wind is still howling. right down the street, i can barely see the water up there because we're getting so much blow-off, the wind picking up the water and blowing the rain on the surface right in my direction. >> reporter: now it's really ripping, and this is the part you fear so much. it happens for just brief minutes. literally it will just happen for minutes, but this is the part of the storm you fear all

the time. all right. just getting my bearings real quick. i thought i heard lightning. i think it was just a sign that was whipping in the wind. we're covered. our crew has protection. we've got helmets on, got the eye protection, and now this is the meat of it right here, folks. that could end up being about the longest 15 minutes of my life. the gusts are so brief, it's a quick two-second punch. but the problem is now they're coming more frequently. you know, you can get a gust to happen like once a minute. now you're getting a gust that happens three, four, five times a minute. the sustained winds are now

elevated. so now you're just -- it's ratcheting up. >> mike, take a second. you need a second? >> reporter: yeah. i'm good. >> it's always great when we guys in the studio tell them, hey, take it easy. relax. we do that all the time because we're trying to make sure our reporters are staying safe out there, but that is exhausting, exhausting work to be out there in danger. there's a mental anxiety to it, and the actual physical anxiety of being blown away by those winds. we'll continue to cover this storm all the way through the night and through tomorrow. shelly freeland joins me by phone right now. she is the mayor of sarasota, florida. down here as you can see, the worst of the storm is beyond sarasota. mayor, in fact are you feeling any substantial wind and rain right now? >> oh, yes, absolutely. we can hear the wind howling. i can hear it at my home here in sarasota. the rain is pounding, and the wind is howling.

but we are just so thankful that it's not as bad as it could have been. we were at a category 4, and at the time that it was actual landfall, we were down to a category 2. so although it sounds bad, it could have been much worse. >> of course. it's still pretty serious. anybody who hasn't been in those kinds of winds, you know, most people haven't felt winds sort of above the 50s. you're still gusting to about 54 right now. at what point can you have your emergency services go out and evaluate what's going on in sarasota? >> once we get below a sustained-mile-per-hour, 45 miles per hour, then we will begin to redispatch our law enforcement and first responders to go out and assess damage, looked for any downed trees, downed power lines, connect with our local authorities, and begin to start responding to 911 calls that were made during the storm. >> do you have any sense of what the major complaints have been,

what those 911 calls have largely been and what is your situation as you know it with respect to power right now in sarasota? >> well, we are at about half of fpl's power, about 130,000 are without power here throughout sarasota county. that's about half of what fpl serves here in our region. so we have had a lot of sporadic outages, and people have been on and off. but we're a lot better than we could be. here i am, and we have power, and we have friends that have been out of power all day. so, you know, it differs from street to street. >> mayor, because of communication outages in different places, a lot of people are depending on the things they hear on national television to call their people in florida and tell them what the latest is. what is your message to the people of sarasota now as they go to sleep tonight? they'll wake up in the morning. there's a temptation after the cabin fever of being inside to get out there and explore. what do you want people to know? >> well, first of all, i want people to stay put. people are going to hear

category 2 is not as bad as category 4, and they're going to want to get out of the house. they have cabin fever. they've been in the house for 24 hours. they're going to want to come outside and see what's going on. we're asking for folks to stay put. we're also asking for folks not to call 911 unless it is an emergency. don't call if your power is out. don't call if you have questions about whether things are open. call only in the event of an emergency. we want to make sure we get to those folks that have had property damage as a result of fallen trees, and there have been some. frankly we're concerned about flooding at this point. we want to make sure we can get out and assess that damage and make sure folks don't get stuck in their cars and that it's safe to travel. the mayor of sarasota, our thoughts are with you. we'll be with you all night as we cover the storm. let's go over to steve sauce that before we wrap up this hour. >> you don't want to be deceived just because of the lower storm surge numbers.

it's still a tropical system. it's generating these very large rainfall totals. we're starting to see flood warnings go up along these coastal counties, not with surprise here because areas like the st. john's river starting to flod. th -- flood. to go along with it, nasty winds which remember when you throw water down into the sandy soils, it uproots trees, and you get flooded roadways that you can't see during the overnight hours. that's the major concern here. as we advance into the time period, you'll be able to see at least this thing's on the move. it's not stalling like harvey did. it's moving on to the north at about 14 miles per hour, so the projected path with it brings up through the big bend of florida and up into the georgia vicinity. but with that comes severe weather across georgia. also the high tide cycle. so as far north, which is kind of unprecedented, we're having areas of coastal flooding in

south carolina and georgia with this inundation of ocean water. >> i remember harvey was moving at two miles an hour at one point. thanks very much for that. this wraps up our hour, this particular hour of hurricane irma coverage on msnbc. but we are not stopping. my colleague, cynthia mcfadden, is on deck for the next hour of coverage. this storm is still serious. it's still on top of florida. you're watching msnbc. cynthia mcfadden is up next.