rick reichmuth has been watching the storm from the fox extreme weather center. have you watched hurricaning closely for many, many years. put this in to context for us. how big is this compared to other famous hurricanes? >> rick: easy to confuse it big versus strong in terms of hurricanes. big vs. strong. kind of two different things. this is average size hurricane. really strong hurricane. in fact, the strongest hurricane to hit texas since 161 to give you an indication. also the strongest anywhere in the u.s. in the last 123 years. a category 4 storm now. i would say it's amazing how good the national hurricane center has been. both in the direction of the storm and intensity. when we saw these forecasts

first, though, let's go to chief meteorologist rick reichmuth in the weather centered. hi, rick. >> great briefing from the national hurricane center center. they're doing incredible work. some of the points here, the hurricane strengthening now to a category three storm. all indications are is that it doesn't necessarily mean it's done strengthening. went to a eye wall replacement cycle. the outer eye wall is now intact and depends on if that can shrink and strengthen over the next 8 to 12 hours before it makes landfall. that remains to be seen. the storm is getting closer. doesn't really matter. often times people focus on the center of the point. the only thing that matters is the strongest winds are in the eye wall and the right quadrant gets the majority of the surge. that is going to be devastating. after that -- got the wrong map here. we're going to talk about incredible amounts of rain that fall here. he said up to 35 inches. some of our models are outputting numbers higher than that. once this storm moves in and hangs around, it will wobble one direction or the

but, first, fox news chief meteorologist rick reichmuth tracking hurricane harvey in the weather centerng the scene for us. rick? >> rick: hopefully hundreds of thousands of people have evach a large area going to be under the gun from the wind from the hurricane from the storm surge and then from the flooding rain over the next number of days. take a look at this. this is the visible satellite. we are at the last little image of it. but you get a very good idea of what that looks like. we will look at another viewpoint of this. we rarely have seen a storm like this with such a perfect circle, a perfect eye getting right there towards the coast, rockport, texas. this area between port la vok can a lavaca and corpus christi. stiewrge and winds now a category 4 strength. 130 miles per hour right about to get on to landfall. in fact, this padre island seashore here right there is that strongest winds and we are getting very, very close here towards the shore. the bad news is it has slowed down in its forward movement. that means that the effect that we're feeling with it are just going to

let's go to rick reichmuth who is taking a look at some of these latest numbers that have just come in, rick. >> rick: new update just out from the national hurricane center a cat 4 storm. so it has increased to a category 4 storm. winds are 130 miles per hour so we have not seen any weakening of this storm. put up weather 8 behind me i will show you a couple things here. a category 4 hurricane right at landfall, a strengthening hurricane right at landfall is not what you want to see a strengthening hurricane actually transports more of the wind down to the surface and dangerous thing. we saw this with hurricane charlie and hurricane wilma. take a look at this imagery right here, martha. we have a new satellite goes-16. first time we have seen a hurricane on it all of the storms around the crerpght of it. 20 miles offshore. the eye wall is going to be moving right on shore here kind of between corpus christi and port lavaca. where the strongest of the winds are going to be and the storm surge already pulling in here and in the next hour or so it's going to be catastrophic. this is now

rick reichmuth is live at the weather center. steve harrigan is in corpus christi which is due west of where that eye is going to come on. if you are west of the eye of the hurricane you are really in harm's way. he had to shut down the camera baits was going in and out. rick: it's actually the opposite. david: if he was on the good side, imagine what the bad side is like. rick: that's the point. he's on the good side of the storm and had to close the camera down because things were getting so bad there. when i say the good side of this storm i mean that's where you are not going to get the storm surge. the bad side is where you get the storm surge. there is corpus christi. the stoirmts moving towards the midwest. this is the last images here from the visible satellite. this gives an idea of what this eye looks like. it's slows down quite a bit. it's getting close towards this outer banks. 130-mile-per-hour winds, first category 4 storm since 1961 in texas. it's moving so slowly now. the goes-16 satellite allows us to study this.

rick reichmuth standing by right now. hen you are seeing all of the rain and how much and how long this storm is going to hang out there? rick: absolutely who cares. the storm is always going to weaken once it's over land it doesn't have moisture source anymore. i will tell you i think we see this weaken less in a sense because it is not going to get very far off of the land. or off of the water. and so it's going to continue to be able to pull some of this gulf moisture in the next couple of days. that's why we expect to see the rainfall totals so high. a lot of the models we are looking at. how much water is in the at no, sir fear. we are seeing records with this. numbers we haven't seen before as far as how much water is in the atmosphere. all that water up is going to go down and fall. came on shore. hurricane watch in effect until 1:00. continue to see that throughout the day today tomorrow. next number of days be a tornado threat because of the rotation in the atmosphere. small tornadoes not large tornadoes. small to

let's bring in chief meteorologist rick reichmuth. rick, thank you for being with us. >> 300,000 people in corpus christi. it's a decent sized city. the storm has slowed down. that's bad news -- if you want to move on and get out of there, it's not going to happen. not at the strength. it will take a long time for a 130-mile-an-hour storm to begin to wind down. we might not really see that for the better part of 36 hours or so. i want you to notice, kimberly, the satellite -- go 16. the first time we've had a hurricane with its imagery. you get it every 5 minutes instead of 15 minutes. it creates a much more accurate and potentially life-saving picture. to get an idea of this storm right here, we see the doughnut. at the center of that i. when the storms begin to interact with land, the start to slow down. that's not happening at all. the winds that are high up in the atmosphere, transporting down to the ground a lot easier. that means we are going to see probably these wins at 130 gusting to maybe 155 miles an hour. that's about to ha

all the stocks are down today get to fox news chief meteorologist rick reichmuth with more on the hurricane, rick. >> dangerous storm, snuck up on us a little quickly. not a long distance between the yucatan and texas. yesterday nobody was thinking about a major hurricane across the texas coast. that is exactly what we're talking about now. the storm halfway there between yucatan and mexico. became a category is hurricane. hurricane warnings from the red, just south of gal van ton area. it goes inland as well. if we have hurricane, maybe 125 mile-an-hour sustained wind, the wind stay very strong as it moves inland. how far inland it moves will have big impacts for flooding. i will show you that in a second. in the short term, we have really warm waters here. all environmental variables are ripe for continued strengthening. brings us up to a major hurricane. major hurricane is 125 up to 130, talking about a cat-4 storm that first time in this area in 47 years we have seen a storm like that make landfall. the once it makes landfall, gets towards the coast it gets stuck. isn't able to move any

fox news chief meteorologist rick reichmuth in the weather center with the latest. , this looks likely a really bad storm. >> frankly first major hurricane to make landfall on the coast anywhere. we thought it would probably go a little farther toward the south a number of days ago. now that it is back here in the western gulf, went through the bay of campeche, all conditions are ripe for continued strengthened. we just had a tropical storm yesterday. now we have a category one hurricane. the forecast calls for continued intensification of this. hurricane warnings where you seed red, tropical storm warnings where you see the yellow. comes on shore at 125 mile-an-hour category 3 storm, the wind doesn't end at the coast. we'll see hurricane force wind well inland. that is wind side. it will drive a lost storm surge along the coast here. we're talking about days and days of rain. storm will get blocked here, when you look at models it comes towards the texas coast, it gets stuck. it drift notice area for likely bert part of five days or so. maybe meanders back out here

rick reichmuth tracking hurricane harvey for us today. it seems like this came out of nowhere in some ways and we were not paying attention and we had a big storm on our hand. rick: we are pretty good at tracking the direction of a storm but we are not good at forecasting the intensity of the storm. yesterday we were saying we had a tropical storm or minimal hurricane, and it has gone through a period of rapid intensification, and there is no reason to think it's not going to continue that process. the environmental conditions look like their favorable for it. hurricane warnings in effect along the coast. if we see a category 3 or 4 storage make landfall. we have inland hurricane warnings in toward victoria and places inland. as well as the storm surge right along the coast. and a big rain event. the water temperatures are warm to a depth. there is a bigger source of fuel. they pull up water from the ocean. if water is cooler, it starts to lose some of its ability to strengthen. the water will continue to pull up watch water and continue t

fox news chief meteorologist rick reichmuth with more. what do you see there?rds from the governor. the problem is, there's a lot of area in harm's way. category three could be a category four storm somewhere here on the shore tomorrow evening in towards saturday morning. moving on shore and stalling out. doesn't lose any ability to move it in one way or another. so we have a lot of area where we'll be seeing hurricane force winds, a lot of tree damage and storm surge. we watch this thing stall out for a number of days. i'm talking about maybe until wednesday of next week. so the rainfall totals of intense tropical moisture will be extreme over five days. take a look at this. we have numbers in the 30-inches of rain. go over towards houston, we have numbers in the teens to 20s. they go inland to san antonio and austin. that's the cut off there at i-35. this nudges west. big rain there. if it goes to the east, more rain there. a lot of people in the path of this and includes louisiana. haven't talked about that as much but we will the next couple days. martha? >

what is the deal with that, rick reichmuth?> this is a storm we've been watching that came across the pacific, the caribbean and across the yucatan. now conditions finally favorable for strengthening. this is the track that we have out of here potentially getting towards hurricane strength sometimes by friday here right along the coast of florida. the problem here, the hurricane moving on coast is one of the problems, but a storm that stalls out is a much bigger problem. most of our model guidance bringing it somewhere here towards the texas coast. the bigger problem is what happens after that. these are steering patterns and go away and gets blocked actually right here across parts of texas. when you have something like that, you have a lot of tropical moisture potentially continuing to pull up these waters that are really warm here across the gulf, well into the upper 80s and that means if the storms get close to shore, we get a lot of rain. we'll likely see this get close to hurricane strength potentially more than that. sat

bring in rick reichmuth tracking the storm of course in the weather center.arvey? >> still strengthening. the looks like the pressure con ins to drop. look at satellite imagery, cheryl, look at that. they launched a new satellite, goas 16. gives refreshes of images. every five minutes. we have never seen a hurricane before on satellite imagery, this clearly defined. look at the eye not so clear, getting closer to land, much clearer. that is bad news with a strengthening storm getting toward landfall. unfortunately category 3 storm can not rule out it is getting stronger. makes landfall tonight sometime. of tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. still category one hurricane. 18 hours of hurricane-force winds. corpus christie, wind gusting 70 miles-an-hour. you're still 70 miles away from center of the storm. a large area getting strong wind, incredible area getting strong wind and heavy rain. nudged up against high pressure. once it moves inland, it will move it back a little bit. because of that we're talking about rainfall totals, three, four feet. models put out things as h

the latest on what could be a monster of a storm with rick reichmuth. you've been tracking this.ll us? >> we have a hurricane right here. by the time this merged over the yucatan, quickly it strengthens again. there's not a lot of distance between her and the coast of texas. that's why we have not had a long time for warning. the environmental conditions are ripe for continuing intensification. we have a category one hurricane, continues to pull up to the northwest here. the official forecast bringing this to a strong category three hurricane, a major hurricane, before it moves on shore. not out of the question that this could be a category four storm. we're talking about all of the things that come with a hurricane. a storm surge, strong winds. this is a very kind of low-lying flat shelf here. the storm surge will be exacerbated and that water goes farther inland. the problem is, once the storm gets here, the models go zigzagging crazy there because it gets blocked by high pressure from the north and can't go anywhere. we're talking about five days of rain all here across easter

rick reichmuth is here. yesterday this was a little thing. >> yeah, a tropical storm.ten good at forecasting the direction, where storms are going to go. we're not that good at forecasting intensity of storms. so we have known that this is the target area for three or four days. we didn't it would be this strong. but environmental conditions are such that the water is warm and there's nothing in the upper atmosphere to disturb it. we think it will strengthen to a category one storm, could be up to a four. we thought we were talking about a big rain event, which we are and maybe not as much as a windstorm surge but now we're talking both. the high pressure will move into the top of it. so you see the models. they all come up here to the coast and do that. they get stuck there. so it's going to meander around for probably five days. we're talking about rain from friday until wednesday. >> shepard: 39 inches of rain. >> yes. this is a really reliable model. when you see these numbers being spit out, that's a euro. the american version of the forecasting. kind of the same

check in with rick reichmuth for the forecast in siberia this morning. rick: i don't know.an weather forecast. abby: a lot of downpours, rick, including right here. rick: here a lot of the west. monsoonal activity which we love it's the rainy season we need the rain. we have had too much of it. flooding around las vegas yesterday certainly problematic. tropics, got to remember in hurricane season. not all that active. obviously. it gets active right around now. we have two things we are watching. one here in across parts of the caribbean. this bought bottom moisture is going to move in towards the western part of the caribbean and eventually into the gulf of mexico. we will watch that one closely. another one we are likely going to see form into a storm that's out here, one of the waives coming off of africa. getting to that active point. everybody needs to be watching, especially along the eastern seaboard. right now the eastern seaboard is one big line of storms that moved through the cold front sagging down to the south. good news, that will drop your temperatures and hu

steve: rick reichmuth is already a winner in our book and is he outside where it's a pretty nice day i won't be here tomorrow. just fyi. take a look at the weather maps. talk about what's going on. everyone wondering what today is like. more people wondering about monday. quickly today overall the weather pretty good. big storms across much of the east yesterday. most of that storm has moved on. few showers across parts of florida and across parts of new mexico. temperaturewise still hot across parts of the south. hot and humid. that continues. take a look at what we are taking about for monday, the big dale of the eclipse and here's what that looks like weatherwise. overall, i will tell you not that bad. right smack in the center of the country, places like nebraska and that northwest corner there of missouri is going to see some cloud cover as well as coastal south carolina. everybody else, i will tell you we have good viewing conditions for this eclipse. exciting. guys? abby: i can't wait. we will all be watching. thanks, rick. steve: two florida police officers ambushed overnight