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

here, tropical storm hermine is the trend. this is what you expect as it loses the energy from the water. then it transitions into a bigger rain event than it is a wind event. still 70 mile-per-hour winds close to hurricane strength. there's the track moving away from the state of florida. the problem is, we'll still have the impact throughout the day because of the heavy rainfall. friday at 1:30, we first rainfall making landfall in the state of florida in years. as i mentioned, a tropical storm. look at the rains associated with it. the winds that are setting up, we had one last night. thiss nebringing us torrential rain. you are hearing the thunder out there if you are waking up with us. look at wesley chapel and pasco. very heavy rain into pinellas. that band a little farther to

eastern and citrus and portions of hernando, it's not raining there. a lyle drier to the north and up for the rest us, it's coming through. this band that has set up here will stay on topch us here. it will pour because we will result that in several inches of accumulations. we'll have gusty winds a tropical storm force event and wind gusts at port richie at 50 miles per hour. the other issue we'll be talking about a lot and showing you pictures coming out of our counties along the coast as the storm surge came in again with the high tide overnight. there are the gusts. at the present time track diminishing throughout the day. we'll talk about how much rainful we expect in the next several hours. hopefully you do not have a morning commute this morning because it is going to be

>> not roads, we also have several crashes and big crashes to tell you about. take a look at this behind me here. this is 275 southbound near bush boulevard. they are saying one lane is getting through, although it looks like they might have a wrecker on the sce. it looks like all lanes are blocked. you can see the cars stacking up here. you might want to use florida or nebraska. we'll keep you posted right here and on tw at memorial highway. look at all of the blue on my map. that is potential areas for flooding and ponding on the road. so be aware of that. we have a serious crash at manatee at state route 70. northbound lanes are blocked and we're told that's for a wrecker to get on the scene and move the cars out of the way. this could cause quite a mess.

morning. the sunshine sky way remains closed. bay ore remains closed. we have a lot going on. you definitely want to check twitter and tampa bay traffic. dan? we're getting the rain and gusty winds for the storm that passed over the station but the panhandle, the big bend taking the brunt of it. >> michael paluska is in tallahassee right now. has the worst passed you or are you in the thick of ound 1:30, it s scary at times with the gusts coming in. we were outside in it the entire time. when you go around areas of tallahassee as we've been driving around this is what all of the roads looked like. this is debris everywhere. look at this huge branch that fell off of this oak tree. let's show you the video of where this oak rim is down here in the middle of the road because when the storm came in,

vengeance. the wind was whipping, howling, knocking out power. we saw a lot of explosions in the sky as transformers around us were exploding from limbs falling on them. the city of tallahassee had to stand down. they couldn't get cruise up. for the first time tonight, we were able to hear firefighters responding to calls for whatever they had to head to. they had to hunker down because it was too dangerous to respond. we were able to step out into the wind to show viewers what it not to go out. it really is incredible. even a category 1 hurricane, just how powerful the winds can be. we're told there are 60% of our customers are without power. now cruise are going around. what they arasking people to do is to call and tell them where some of the trees are down so they know the general area that they can respond to because they have so many power outages. we're trying to get an idea of

we'll hopefully head there later. that is the main concern that the winds and storms are pushing through. on the coastal area where's we were earlier today, the waters with are already rising before hermine came into shore, and they were getting high water. there are about 160,000 people across the area where we are in tallahassee that d emergency responders don't want people on the roads because of issues like this. they want to try to get this debris removed. i already tried to grab it to pull it out of the way, but i wasn't strong enough. maybe i'll assemble a team with my photographer and get it out of the way. this hasn't rained yet and gotten any wind from the system yet and checking the radar. it looks like hipping up fast along the east coast.

keep you posted on new developments. michael paluska, abc action news. stores a closed once again today and the majority of the school districts, but school is open in sarasota and polk county. pass coy, pinellas, manatee and hillsborough counties are closed. the you can drop off your children but plan on extra time this morning because you need to fill out paperwork. it is too dangerous for firefighters to rescue people from flooded homes. marisela burgos is live as first responders do pull some people out of homes they can reach. >> reporter: here's what's happening so far in pasco

their homes in the green bay and hudson beach areas. i did just get this report and we'll walk down mere. we're actually standing on aurora and massachusetts where there was a report of 12 people that need to be rescued from their home. the pasco county fire department is here as well as other , but we're going to get a little closer so you can see how deep this is and how flooded this is opinion soth sure. we need to go over here with the flashing lights to get a closer look at what they are looking at here. the report is that they have 12 people that need to be rescued from their homes because this is flooded. over in the corner, i don't know if you can see it or not, but they under the process of what looks evacuating people in pasco county. we are along massachusetts and

people they are rescuing, we'll bring that back to you. marisela burgos, abc action news. take a look at this picture from sarasota county. that is a huge tree that came down. crews were able to clear the road overnight. this is a good example why it's good to stay home altogether. raw sewage pumps malfunctioned at a clear water untreated waste water into the streets. it can handle 22 million gallons but they received 30 million gallons and the sewage overflowed. >> i came out and looked at it and noticed it was sewage running through there. >> reporter: that makes you concerned. >> yeah. they need to do something about

beaches, honeymoon 0 island, indian rocks beach and reddington shores have poor water quality and will be retested on tuesday. the city council voted in favor of yearly fees to improve the city's drabbage as the rains come -- drainage as the rains could am down hard. anyone who owns property will be assessed and will have to pay a drainage fee. if you own an average sized home, the fee ou $45 a year. if you own a bigger home, you could pay more. a large deck or pool could work against you from any structure that keeps rain from running into the ground. cracking down on boaters because of rear mine making dangerous conditions. seas are expected to be 10 to 14 feet. the sheriff's offices have combined to patrol the waters

y be prepared to stop. a lot of folks are without power at 5:11. let's get a quick check of the power outages. this is the duke energy power outage map. there's central pin nailless with 6,000 people -- pinellas with 6,000 people without power. this will just take a second to load. we'll show you where 97% of the customers do have the total number right now is up to 16,271. a quick check at the electric cooperative, and you can see the total number of customers without power right now is almo we'll keep you posted on the power outages throughout the morning. >> the power outages continue to increase because the wind gusts are still in excess of 50 miles per hour. the st. pete airport just

gusts. that's not isolated, by the way. that continues with our tropical storm hermine, downgraded from a hurricane. for us, it will be the same. very heavy rainfall. look at these pockets of lightning here. we contininto pasco county. this is remarkable with the band that is moving through. very heavy rain, very february lightning into wesley chapel as well. that will continue as everything has set up from south west to northeast. ok coming from, right? we have more to get through hear. that involves lightning. these storms have embedded winds in excess of 40 miles per hour, which is tropical storm force and why we have the warning as this stream of moisture will continue for the next several hours. current wind gusts to 54 in st. pete. this is going to be a problem throughout the day. there's tampa at 40.

i think that will be for a good chunk. we'll be back with more accumulations and where hermine is eventually headed into a few minutes. coming up also the storm tears a piece off of cedar

welcome back. take a look at this. this dock is not supposed to be

the web cam out of cedar key. the waves had a sign on it for libby's landing. as you can see, it bobs around for a few minutes. the dock eventually takes out that web came. wow. ivan cabrera joins us now with the latest on hermine. [no audio ] >> if you are just joining us, we're talking about a tropical storm. it mad per-hour winds. it's down to 70, so that makes it a tropical storm. infact, nditions are improving for tallahassee and worsening, in fact, for us. upwards of 800 lightning strikes. this is torrential rain on with the lightni as well. the problem here is, we're not we're going to continue with it for the next few hours. these will have downpours that will put down 1, 2, 3 inches of rainfall in a short amount of time. this is what we had to deal

you go back to wednesday when this event occurred and some areas are pushing to inches. -- areas are pushing 20 inches there's the moisture that continues to move in and along with that, frequent lightning as well nap is rainfall that is making additional power outages. we've been talking about the thousands of folks without power. 35, 40 mile-per-hour gusts. you can go in a little tighter and you can see 50, 55, which is what i'm looking at. heavy rain threats continue for us today. we're going to have that early coastal flooding. now, that is dependent on the high tide cycles. we had one yesterday and then we had one overnight between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. that is what caused the addi flooding. that's why folks have been

humvees, for goodness sakes. the tornado watch has my concern lessening nor that as the winds are not conducive for that as they re yesterday. still across the northern counes at this point here, it's going to be the big rines will be the heaviest threat. by the way, the futurecast can see that continue and just kind of streaming in throughout the midday hour. all right. for more, night, bill logan and what you can expect. >> these are numbers we don't normally see when we are giving you a rundown for the boating forecast. winds from the southwest sustained to 30 knots. again, gusts can be higher up to 50 nots. seas average 10 to 15 feet. not a good day to get out on the boat.

seeing much of that before the sunsets we get a glimmer of that before 8:00. current temperatures around the region are mild, very tropical. these temperatures have not really moved much from yesterday money 're seeing that they're not going to move much by going up later on. upwards of 30, 40 knots. this is going to continue, especially right along the coastal areas until we get into later parts of the afternoon and into tomorrow before things calm down. again, tropical storm now continuing to move that water, that rain up the eastern seaboard in through the carolinas and into the south side virginia area. for us, hour by hour forecast shows, yeah, rain heavy at times. we're only going to hit a high of 84 degrees. as we look at that seven-day forecast, well, we finally get a weekend. it looks like we'll get a break by sunday at least.

are around. sunday we'll clear things out and begin to return to normal after we say so long to hermine. we can't say so long yet money we've got a friday morning commute to deal with. here's janelle with a look at the roadways. >> reporter: utenf if your drive takes you over the sunshine sky way, you have to take the long way around this morning because it's still closed. clossince yesterday about noon. so you have to use i-75 instead. ou know, that adds an extra hour to commute depending on where you are coming from and where you are going. we have a crash on 275. southbound lanes after bush. this is the camera set up at bird street. this is a semi that was possibly carrying fuel that might have spilled onto the roadways so it could be a while before they clear this up. you can see the backup already

around this. coming up, hermine sweeps away a $5 million investment made with your tax dollars. why this problem could now change your weekend pls

it's 5:25 now. $4.5 million washed out to sea happened on honeymoon island. >> four months ago, they spent

nourishment project but all of that sugary white sand was taken back out to the gulf. this is not the first time newly imported sand has been washed away. >> several years ago, they did a beach renourishment. they spent a billion dollars on putting sand out there. it was gone in, like, two months. if they are not going to do the renourishment properly, don't waste our tax dollars. >> officials in pinellas county says the beaches bring in $2.5 million to honeymoon island every year. coming up this morning, the social media storm and a look at how you are helping us cover hermine with your videos

now at 5:30, we're taking you live to reports in the panhandle where hermine made landfall just south of tallahassee overnight. >> with rain moving through, we're tracking everywhere. flooding pops up. ivan cabrera joins us with where the rain is coming down the hardest. >> that will continue to be the problem over the next several hours as we talk about the heavy rainfall.