>> mike seidel, melbourne, florida. here's hoping you and the forecasters are right. mike, thanks. >>> that is just one part of our weather story tonight. the other is dangerous weather in several other parts of the country, including severe storms that hit the midwest very hard. nbc's katy tur has our report. >> reporter: a spectacle of light over chicago as lightning bolts hit the willis tower, the light show, high winds and heavy rain lasted for hours. flooding chicago highways and causing sinkholes overnight. this morning, travelers were forced to abandon their cars in the hopes of making flights out of o'hare airport. >> there's absolutely no way into the airport. so here we go. >> reporter: the storm known, a rare weather event known as a derecho. straight line winds with gusts up to 80 miles an hour rolled across five states, killing at least three people. >> we get thunderstorms, we don't ever get anything like this. >> reporter: in iowa, two teens were sucked into a storm drain after eight inches of rain fell in just a few hours. late today authorities found t

it's where we begin tonight with weather channel meteorologist mike seidel on the beach in melbourne, florida. mike, good evening. >> good evening, brian, today the bahamas took a battering, gusty winds over 40 miles an hour, and heavy rain, that's what we're expecting here along the florida east coast beaches tonight and tomorrow. it is a mid grade tropical storm winds of 50 miles an hour, it's strengthened this afternoon, drifting northwest at 2 miles an hour, because it's not far offshore, tropical storm watches are up right now. the watches and warnings will be extended up the east coast tomorrow and thursday. as it feels the effects of the jet stream, arthur will start to accelerate, first north then northeast, and by thursday, expected to attain hurricane status off the carolinas. by friday morning, the worst of the impacts, strong gusty winds surge moving across the outer banks. and then the consensus right now takes what's left of our hurricane out at that point out to sea. we're thinking for the holiday weekend only peripheral impacts in the northeast, that would be surge and

weather channel meteorologist mike seidel sent us this radar sequence of weather conditions at the timee resulting explosion set apartment buildings near the airport on fire. it took hours for hundreds of first responders to put out the flames and deal with the victims. >>> the faa ban on u.s. airline flights to israel has been extended another 24 hours because of the threat of incoming rockets at tel aviv's ben gurion airport. there is talk in israeli media and elsewhere about a possible political motive behind the faa ban. former new york city mayor michael bloomberg flew to tel aviv from new york on the israeli airline el al to make a point about safety when he was asked today if the faa ban had a political motive perhaps meant to bring israel to peace talks by crippling tourism. he said, "it is true that the faa ban gives hamas a win." meantime, those rockets continue today along with the ground war in gaza and civilian deaths. 36 israelis have been killed, 695 palestinians including 161 children. the u.s. says tonight the number of children killed over a two-day period this week av

as for the tropical depression, mike seidel joins us. what can you tell us, mike? >> hey, tamron. as you mentioned the hurricane center upgraded it to the first tropical storm of the season named arthur. maximum sustained winds are 40 miles per hour. drifting northwest at 2 miles per hour. here at melbourne beach we're under a tropical storm watch from around daytona to flagler, those areas under a tropical storm watch. now the water is coming up high tide in the next half hour. last night's high tide did eat some of the beach away. we have folks out here on the beach. here is where they are. trying to work on the tan. what happens as they come out and a shower comes in and sends them back to the pool and hotel. as far as the latest radar. there it is. the heavy rain is still on the southern end of the rotation. it's off miami, off fort laud dale toward the bahamas. that's where the rain is. we've had a few showers pin wheel in on the northwest side. we've had quick five minute downpours over the past couple of hours. here is the track right now. expect it to ride off the coast to

we caught these images overnight of mike seidel from the weather channel, he's been covering the storm overnight, but this was him earlier this morning, around 3:00 a.m., really struggling to stand up. >> we've got reporters stationed along the coast. also nbc meteorologist bill karins tracking the storm here in the studio with us. bill, first of all, where is the storm right now and how strong is it? >> everyone that's just waking up wants to figure out what happened, how bad it is and the consequences of this category 2 landfall in eastern north carolina. it made landfall at 11:00 last night right around cape lookout, right when it was scheduled. it had strong winds with them. cape lookout gusting to 101. that's a serious wind gust. if these wind gusts happened anywhere really else besides the storm-tested outer banks, the damage would have been a lot worse. this is an area that gets hit every other year, sometimes by major hurricanes, so they can handle this and that's why you're not hearing about a lot of extreme damage out there. the big cities didn't have big winds at all. wilmin

. >> i know mike seidel was noting where he was not too far where you were. concern did the degradation of the sand being taken away. you certainly have seen those 100-mile-an-hour winds you're reporting right now. as you look up and down the fol beach, as the folks arrive at the beach, what are the conditions going to be like? >> the shore line has changed overnight. this dip was not here yesterday. we are dropping several feet down here. like i said the tide back right now. but this is all washed away all ever this sand here for this drop so this is what people are going to find when they come out. a little less beach front than when we were out here enjoying it about 24 hours ago. >> sarah, thank you so much. the latest for us there in the outer banks where they saw the brunt of arthur the last 12 hours. >>> first hurricane ever to make landfall in the u.s. on the fourth of july arthur is threatening holiday plans. the category two storm climbing north while the new york area should escape a direct hit. forecasters warn of high surf, dangerous rip tides an

we caught these images overnight of mike seidel from the weather channel, he's been covering the stormim earlier this morning, around 3:00 a.m., really struggling to stand up. >> we've got reporters stationed along the coast. also nbc meteorologist bill karins tracking the storm here in ttu

the weather channel's mike seidel sent this report from a rather wet and windy kill devil hill on thecarolina coast. >> the northern eye wall hurricane arthur now hitting in north carolina on the outer banks. it sticks out into the atlantic. and all night thursday night and now into early friday morning, we've seen the waves increasing and the water coming up. although the tide is actually going out. it can't because of these very strong winds. we've had gusts south of here as high as 100 miles per hour. this is the earliest recorded landfall of a hurricane in north carolina going back to 1851. we've lost a lot of sand. there's a big drop off here of about three plus feet. that's all going out into the atlantic. what we call beach erosion. that is the big issue. a lot of heavy rain here. once the storm goes by in a few hours, we'll have winds coming around from the west-northwest. that's going to push the water from the sound, the big bodies of water to our west to the sound side, what we call sound side flooding. up here, we have hundreds of thousands of tourists here for the july fo

is that going to be dampening the festivities on the east coast mike seidel joins us for the latest forecast, are you if florida right now? >> reporter: ai am, becky. we have storm winds that passed us. we pay get tropical rain bands. you can see the surf is not extremely agitated. we are talking wave heights as high as two or three feet. we have folks doing surfing if we can go over that way and show the surfers, we'll talk about what's going on here, there is a surfer out there. there we go. we got a couple surfers out there t. waves off the coast, they're running six to seven feet. >> that i have backed off. we got a little sun schein, let me show you the current satellite radar, get an idea of what's going on, it's off the coast about 100 miles east-northeast of cape canaveral. it's a 60-mile-an-hour tropical storm. it's only moving north at six miles an hour. tonight and tomorrow, we start to act sell rate. it will strengthen by thursday afternoon, the official forecast in the national hurricane center brings it up to a hurricane south, wilmington, wrightsville beach t. main impacts wil