we'll still be dealing with heavy rainfall and of course be watcng rather closely the radar as far as any potential spin-ups here that would be occurring. we've got a lot to get through here. the next few hours are with you. abc action news starts right now. captions by: caption colorado, llc (800) 775-7838 comments@captioncolorado.com now at 4:30, hurricane emergency is in effect for the next few hours. i'm deiariley. >> i'm dan shaffer. hmine made landfall south of tallahassee with 80 mile-per- hour winds. michael paluska is live where the center of the storm is passing to the east. michael, what are conditns like now? [no audio ] >> reporter: you know, we've been ridg t the storm here this tallahassee, and i can tell you as soon as they wall started to come hore

three hours ago, the was intense. we're looking at the debris of the winds from 60, 70, 80 miles 30 miles from where we are t standing. here is a giant tree limb compliments of an oak tree. so this oak tree had its limbs come down. the tree itself is just fine, but this is like this throughout the entire area. we're told 60% of the people just in tallahassee don't have po finally tonight, power crews are able to go out and check to figure out where the tree limbs are. th are asking where did th trees come down so they uld go fix it. they couldn't go out during the heart of the secause the winds were so intense. we're gettg a nice break here. this is the first break we've had in the past 15 to 20 minutes or so. we have a lot of video that we shot overnight. we're puttin g thgether and show you the video when we do our next live shot in the next 30 minutes or so.

telling us is people should not go out of their homes to check things out bechere's too much debris. they need to get to where they are going. what concerns us is the storm surge. ivan was mentioning a record 1 foot high storm surge. we don't know what that was here so there's a lot of people who have been riding the storm out and are struggling right now. so hopefully they are okay and hopefully power can get restored back to the people who need it the most. we'll be out we we'll ku postedp in right now in tallahassee, michael paluska, abc action news. cedar key reporting an all-time record high storm surge. watch to the left of your screen there as it's moving now into the middle bomb tom portion of your screen. that is a dock. rising walter washed that boat

web cam overnight. many people in the panhandle spent the night boarding up their hois is from it kept people indoors. we start in pinellas county, just one of the more than two dozen counties still under tornado watch until 8:00 this morning. ashley yore is live on clearwater beach. what are conditions out there right now? >> reporter: good morning, deiah. we're trying to seek a little bit of shelter here. we are actually on the beach, though. i want to show you what we're dealing with. i think the trees say it all. you look at them. they are just flapping like crazy. i want to take you over this way. we're going to move to the edge of our shelter hereo i can show you. we have intense rain but even more intense than that is the w i have to tell you, we were taking the bridover here to clear water beach and felt our

wind. even just walking 30 conds to get here, i am completely soaked my umbrella is broken. if you can avoid being out here in this, that's what you want to do. at this hour it's still early so not a lot of people out haven't seen anyone walking around or out on the beach. that's what law enforcement s to avoid. no one should be out if you can avoid this because, are dealing with treacherous conditions even though the eye of the storm is a significant distance away. i'm ashley yore, abc action news. school is out again in hillsborough, pasco, hernando, pinellas and citrus county. hurricane hermine brought a lot of strong winds, and still doing that right now.

turn destroyed homes. in valrico, this massive tree snapped a home in half. people were inside when that happened. fortunately everyone made it out okay. the strong wind and heavy rain picked up for 2 or 3 minutes before the tree fell. >> it's like slow motion. you know, we saw the ceiling come down. if you look at it, you can see there were three of us in the living room. his daughter was in the far room, but the way the tree fell, we were inches -- >> the power was officials are inspecting the damage now. today neighbors begin the cleanup. winds knocked over trees in clearwater. our cameras caught one tree that landed on a trucand boat. we also caught another tree sparked a small fire. hat clearwater rescue has voted one nes. that have fallen on powe

reddington beach that wash up onshore here. >> the impittsburgh will continue over the next several hours and continuing through the midday hours. that's the worst of hermine's weather that will be on top of us and leaving tallahassee as conditions begin improve markedly there. the m made landf we talked about last night at 1:30. this is what i'm here. you see tallahassee beginning to see the end of the rain shield. it is these bands that can set up here that cannot only bring us enal rain but embedded in them. as the last few minutes, still reporting the 50 mile-per-hour wind at the airport at 35 here. so this is the pocket of very heavy rain that we'll be dealg throughout the mornin. this is torrential downpours. not only that, you can hear the thunder if you are under any of

portions of manatee. we'll widen out the shot to see the issue here. where is the rain ending? we have to keep going. the moisture will sit on top of us here for what looks li the next few hours. that will be a problem for fresh water flooding. as far as the winds, 20 to 30 mile-per-hour winds, expein gusts. taedabout at the top of the newscast here, we still have the potential for some of we still have a tornado watch through the 8:00 a.m. hour. we'll keep you posted on that. here's fast. this model was picking up on this last night as we had been talking about this. you'll be able to see more moisture coming in. kind of a train track setting up here. so we have not much rain to the north. not much weltothsouth, but right here across hillsborough, we're looking at very heavy s rain including pasco as well. now, thas additional rainfall

flooding across the area, upwards of 3 to 5 inches for later on today. then we had the gulf ooding, the storm surge that impacted us as well. we have another high up in citrus as well. so early coastal flooding and then again, we're going to continue with very heavy rain through the day and that rain will be accompanied by strong winds as well. >> thanks, ivan. let's get a quick traffic here. 4:38. right now, you are looking live at police activity near sly avenue. looks like a bad wreck in the southbound direction south of bush boulevard. all of the circumstances yet. we do know that lanes are blocked as you can see. maybe one or two lanes are getting by very slowly. traffic is blocked there by the first responders. we'll check the roads he again in about 15 minutes. in part of pinellas county, people are dealing with

it overcame the treatment plant with water. it was inundated with 30 million gallons in a 24-hour span causing the pumps to malfunction and sent untreated near creeks and streams. >> i noticed sewage oning through there. >> reporter: that makes you concerned. >> yeah. they need to do something about it. >> the water officials are reminding locals it's dangerous to come into contact with raw sewage. officials are enuragin everyone to stay away from barriers they set up. flooding continues to be a major concern for pasco county. new port richey are dealing with flooding in the yards, driveways, and around tir homes. more s thadbags were filled in pasco county just yesterday alone. we continue to follow the damage caused by her cane hermine this morning. >> after the break, we'll take

there are reports that u.s. 1988 is shut down. a big night for pitcher cobb. he makes his return after over a year away from the game with

all right. we're back with continuing coverage on the first hurricane

of course we're talking hurricane hermine with winds of 80 miles per hou the storm at this point, of course, weakening as far as maximum sustained winds. still rra huicane inland at 75 miles per hour. will continue down. the storm is not even anywhere close to being done with us. we this tail that is setting up with very heavy rain anof concerns that continue through the day. by the way, there's the track and east. ts off to the north eventually the rtheas getting them on labor day weekend with heavy rain. for us, this is the band that is sethere. we have the tornado watch in spinning storms, it is the very heavy rainful that will fall over the same areas. if this thing is moving south or anywhere, we'd be in better shape but it's not. we're talking not just heavy rain buok at this pockets of lightning there.

winds of 40. port richie reporting mi- per-houringusts there. so we are still under a tropical storm, right? this is not over yet. we're talking tropical storm warnings that continue througut here. what that means is winds in eck sus of 31 miles per hour. that will happen right through the midday hour. look at the moisture setng up. we had one band yesterday that set up over us. that's the one that brought us all of the win now this is another boundary that is set up. the models picked up on this last night. we're taing avrains and gusty winds as well. by the way, yeah, the tornado watch continues. any time you get landfall and tropical cyclone, it can produce spinners. we were here yesterday breaking in live with a lot of tornado warnings. usually they are weak but we got a rning anyway. this is futurecast. this will be the issue.

is going the opposite direction, the band is on top of us and has the potential to produce significant flooding because already some areas have picked up upwards of 19 inches of rain. our ground is saturated. we can't take much morewater. i'm talking adecisional water as far as the -- additional water as far as the rainfall. we have a couple of high tides to get to. most of us have already seen that and we're beginning to get the water back. it's too late for our good friends in pasco and citrus as well. we've been looking at evacuations ongoing. this is what we're concerned about. we had the high tide during the day yesterday. when you have something like that in the overnight hours when it starts, folks get caught off grd here. so we're talking 80s through the remaindey with showers and continue with heavy rain throughout the day. i'll be back with more in just a few minutes. 4:46 now. we're monitoring the damage

>> all morning long, we'l live coverage all along the coast and down pinellas county. lindsay logue has the latest. >> there are parts of highway that are shut down. >> reporter: you are right, dan. this is very serious in citrus county. we're headed in that area now and we just hit a road block. u.s. 19 is shut down by crystal river. it's about a more than 10-mile that's because we're being told by deputies that everything west of 19 is flooded.e're on s let me flip the camera around. the entire drive up here, the rain was sideways. we had fierce thundeantning. right now, it's this dry patch. no rain, no wind, and again, it's just kind of eerie out

where we can show you flooding but also an area that is safe for us. have i been monitoring the citrus coty sheriff's facebook page. take a look at the pictu from the twin river marina. this is what flooding looks like over west of 19. that is a picnic table. you have to figure the bench is at least a foot or twup off of the ground, so flooding there. there also have been people on facebook page. people are saying their homes are under water. the deputies aren't letting us go at this point because it's too dangerous. again, we're getting as close as we we are driving. we expect in the next 10 or 15 minutes we should be somewhere near that area. of course we'll check back in with you guys. for now, high tide here in citrus county for the next hour, and that is the area of

before hermine made landfall, the downtown area was ghosttown. the city hasn't had a direct hit anyone 1985. -- since 1985. only a handful of spots stayed open for business. >> i want trail mix, backup batteries for my flashlight. >> i hava lot of friends that are not from florida so are all freaking out that we need no get all of this water and all of this stuff. i'm like, chill it's just a category 1. >> the owner of one restaurant shut down stayed the night next door. he wanted to make sure that his business was safe and secure. >> hurricane hermine is taking a big bite out of our beaches. beach erosion costtaxpays millions. two months ago, $4.5 million was spent on a project

sand into the gulf. now people want a permanent fix. >> a couple of years ago, ey did a beach renourishment and spent about a million dollars on just putting sand out there. it was gone , like, two months. if they are not going to do the renourishment correctly, they need to not waste our tax dollars. >> we should point out beach renourishment makes opinion. tourism officials say honeymoon island million every year. we want to get a look again right now at part of your morning commute. this is i-275 near sly avenue south of burrish. a lot of police activity out there right now. anes are still open to traffic, but we're hearing that there is an accident out there. we're hearing that some lanes are still open but we don't see traffic moving at all out there. we don't have any word on injuries. janelle martinez is joining us

coming up at 5:00. tonight, the rays start a three-game series at the trop against the blue ja and the bucs are trying to trim the roster. here's sports. >> reporter: good morning, everybody. who will make the 53-man roster and who will not? the general manager and the coach spent a part of yesterday making their decision. there are only a handful of spots ilop the pre-season game. one of the positions was a cornerback. if the performance of a couple of nights ago had any impact on the decision, i thinteran jonathan banks should make the cut. banks thinks his entire body of work should put him over the top. >> every game i made plays, so i hope i get more games on my standards where i am on the

done. i'm looking forward to it. >> reporter: you'd think the trop would be a little fuller than usual tonight. pitcher alex cobb is back in the rotation. it's been a long haul from when he had tommy john surgery. tonight couldn't come fast enough. >> it's a very humbling experience to go down away from the game that you love so much for that long. to be close to where i'm at and know i'm going to get an opportunity to pitch this year, i'm very thankful for that. >> reporter: that's the morning sports update. enjoy your day. we continue to follow the latest damage caused by hurricane hermine. it made landfall early this morning south of tallahassee. >> ivan cabrera will have the

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we now have a tropical storm. hurricane hermine has been downgraded. we have 70 mile-per-hour winds right to be expected. it continues with the trend as far as the maximum sustained winds. the issue for us, regardless of

with hermine are coming right on top of us here. that means for you and me, we are in for quite, as they said, heavy downpours throughout. the problem with flooding will accumulations of several inches to come. four minutes until 5:00 right now. still ahead at 5:00, we're going to check in with our crews all along the gulf coast and damage reports come in now from hurricane hermine. >> we take you there live starting with ll

captions by: caption colorado, 00) 775-7838 e- mail: comments@captioncolorado.com now at 5:00 hurricane hermine made ndll withwind speeds of 80 miles per hour. ivan has a look at where the outer bands are hitting viewing area right now. >> rescuers say it's too dangerous to save people it could soon be too dangerous to stay. >> across the state of florida from tallahassee to hudson beach, the lanes of u.s. 19, we've got you covered. good morning and thank you for waking up with abc action news. >> heading straight to ivan tropical storm hermine. n >> it's winds up to 70 miles per hour. it is still lashing the state and specifically our area. we'll talk about the effects