Florida prepares for 'life-threatening' Hurricane Milton

We Begin this hour with the breaking news in Florida the final hours before landfall of hurricane Milton this is a major category for four storm off the West Coast of Florida right now landfall is expected late tonight alerts are in place across almost the entire Florida Peninsula and there are new tropical storm watches and warnings for parts of Georgia and South Carolina the effects from Milton already being felt there has been a tornado outbreak ahead of the storm this is one of those tornadoes that appears to have touched down near Interstate 75 in Broward County

earlier today emergency officials are making their final preparations for this storm it is already being called catastrophic and life-threatening Milton is going to be the second major hurricane to hit the Sunshine State in just the last two weeks our NBC News teams are fanned out across the storm Zone we're going to check in with some of them in just a moment but first let's go to NBC New York meteorologist Matt Brickman who's going to be with us for the full hour Matt getting closer to landfall though it's still hours away what's the latest track well

we're getting updates from the National Hurricane Center just about every hour now and you're going to see these little wobbles in the path of the storm in the track 10 miles north 10 miles south and that's going to make a big difference for these communities in the peak storm surge that they see so the areas just to the south of the center of the storm are likely going to see that 12 to 15t storm surge on the high end right now the storm is anchored 120 Mi Southwest of Tampa with winds to 130 mph and

moving Northeast at 16 mph we have been seeing numerous tornadoes over 10 confirmed tornadoes at this point in active tornado warnings spreading across much of the Southern half of the state there's a tornado watch for that part of Florida until 9:00 tonight here's the latest track and you can see the center of that cone passing through Sarasota but if this goes a little bit farther to the north t Bay could see some of those higher Storm surges a little bit farther south and it's Port Charlotte that's a greater concern look at this though it stays

as a hurricane clear ac across Florida bringing with it these powerful winds so in addition to ocean water being pushed on land with the storm surge we have these high-end winds 80 to 100 miles an hour that can do damage to high-rise buildings that otherwise would avoid some of that heavy rain and flooding down at lower levels you can see all those strong storm surge numbers 8 to 12T even outside of the worst of it this is still life-threatening catastrophic storm surge from the storm we'll continue to update it as it develops back to all

right appreciate that meteorologist Matt Brickman with us thank you let's go now to our correspondents in Florida starting with NBC News senior National correspondent Tom yamas in Sarasota Tom we just heard from Matt Sarasota could see 8 to 12 feet of storm surge and some of the worst of the storm surge tonight what are you experiencing on the ground well right now it's still uh very quiet here in Sarasota a lot of people have evacuated near the water especially where we are uh you know they're as ready as they can be for something like 8

to 12 feet of storm surge but what these storms tend to do is they expose vulnerabilities and that's probably what's going to happen right now we're talking about a massive hurricane nothing like Sarasota has seen at least not in the last 100 years if there is a landfall at least coming onto Shore in the next 8 to 10 hours uh around here people have left it's you don't see a lot of people coming around in fact 3 or 4 hours ago we saw families leaving the hotel where we're staying at trying to drive further west

or I should say East to get away from this hurricane uh places are boarded up people have heated the warnings we hope it some Barrier Islands they've even cut off the water to sort of send the signal that you cannot stay here because if you stay here you will not survive to make sure people come out there right now is a checkpoint to get to those barrier islands and I call it a checkpoint but it's really a barricade it's uh police cars and and officers and they will not let you get to those Barrier Islands

which is a good idea because it's just too dangerous uh you know it comes in waves guys right now it is very calm here an hour or two ago there was head nonstop rain there was very heavy wind gusts but there's been a break in that and that's going to be the story over the next 8 to 10 hours but as you guys have been reporting since you guys came on the air there's the threat of tornadoes there's a threat of this hurricane and there's a lot going on right now people just have to be

patient they have if if they're staying put they got to be very very careful because emergency responders have told us they're not going to answer 911 calls until the conditions get to a point where they feel their officers are safe so it's going to be a long night it's going to be a long day and in the morning we should have a better sense of what's happened here in this area Tom thank you I want to turn to NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gus she's just north of you in Tampa so Steph I I know Tampa

it's a big city it's it's an urban environment where people in high-rise buildings have have people cleared out well you know Kate how they how they do the evacuation zones they've got number of different kinds of zones zones A and B right now in Tampa have cleared out we were in um St Petersburg earlier today all of that the area that was in a flood zone was was cleared out you know it's interesting you've got Tom he's about 60 miles south of where I am right now we're getting heavy rain right now and some pretty

heavy wind gusts as well but really what people here in this city are worried about and they're keeping close eye on those forecasts that we've been hearing from the Weather Service about the wobbles where's the storm going to go and the reason that matters so much here in Tampa is that difference of really 10 miles this way 10 miles that way could mean that the winds bring the water into Tampa Bay creating that historic event that once in a a century storm if it shifts to the south then they will get less surge however there

will still be a lot of surge in this city you're still talking about as much as 8 to 12 ft on top of that as much as a foot of rain in Tampa and that is why officials have been warning and continue to warn residents of this area to to pay attention and listen to the warnings and get out if they need to listen to what the mayor had to say today wherever that storm surge comes if it's 10 to 15 feet and people are trying to ride this out in single story structures there's no

place to go and once the winds get up to uh hurricane speed there's nobody to come and get you that's right because the emergency workers aren't going to be going out when conditions get too dangerous we have heard that in a number of the of the shelters people are arriving in fact some shelters are even at capacity we also know that the major bridges in Tampa and you've been here you know the bridges are really the lifeline getting back to various parts of this region all of the major bridges are shut down if you are

trying to move around this city and in this area it is very difficult right now Kate yeah and we have that picture of the bridge clearly subject to those strong winds you're talking about Steph and it really is sobering to hear these officials not mining words encouraging people to leave so I want to bring in NBC News correspondent Dana Griffin you're in Naples storm surge also a major concern there so what's the latest yeah so right now we're feeling the wind gust pickup up to 50 mph so right now we're not experiencing rain but earlier

we were especially when we we were at the beach where guys even just hours ago you still had Surfers in the water as these high waves were kicking up I took a moment to chat with them about why they were in the water especially as a tornado warning alert was going off and we were seeing lightning in the distance listen to part of our conversation is there ever a moment during the storm where you say this is too dangerous I'm leaving not until we get kicked off that's about it well the speach is technically closed

and we've heard law enforcement say people got to get out like are you guys going to just stay anyway it was just the beach Patrol so we figured we' just get by it figured it was no problem not the cops yet so just try to enjoy the surf and they said they were going to stay out for a couple of hours that was a couple of hours ago so hopefully they have left the area we've seen several people show up to that beach and they say that they are safe they're in highrises or they're farther

Inland so they're not concerned but just like other cities like Tampa Sarasota all of those Coastal residents have been evacuated and we believe most people have been heating those warnings it feels sort of like a ghost town There's just this nice calm here in the city not seeing too many cars on the roadway which is a good sign hopefully people have left the area but you talk about those tornadoes we are in CER County this is the same county where those tornadoes touched down at least one that was confirmed uh rolling across I75 about 26

miles from where we are we left that beach came to a garage further Inland to try to protect ourselves so we are watching we can see the Cloudy Skies behind us uh we are just kind of monitoring conditions as they come ladies yeah we know you'll stay on it out there and hoping folks go home including those surfers Dana Griffin thank you so much and our thanks to Stephanie gos and Tom yamas as well be sure to tune in to Tom Show top story for special coverage of hurricane Milton live from Florida that's at 7

pm Eastern streaming on NBC news now let's go now to public information officer uh Josh Boatright he's in penis County Josh thank you for being with us on an incredibly busy day um I know you have mandatory evacuation orders in place right now for a lot of zones in the county uh we've just been talking with our correspondents and it does seem like most people have followed the orders what do you seeing where where you are yeah we we do have pretty high confidence that a lot of people are heating the warnings as you know

we had a a deadly brush with a hurricane uh just two weeks ago with Helen uh and so I think people here uh have had a taste of how how deadly and how dangerous especially that storm surge can be but we're having to prepare prepare for an even wider range of of dangers this time with both the the storm surge and the wind so we do have mandatory evacuations they're affecting about 500,000 of our residents are in those in those zones but we are seeing a lot of the roads clear and we're hearing a lot

of our public shelters are are well attended at this point we still have plenty of room in those shelters but a few of them have reached capacity uh but we do have some confidence that a lot of people are getting out of Harm's Way yeah and Josh we've talked a lot about the landscape so highrises single story homes but we haven't touched as much on mobile homes we know we're already seeing winds hitting 130 mph you have told people specifically to evacuate from all mobile homes walk us through the risks there there there's huge risks

there um we haven't seen uh sustained hurricane force winds like this we've had a lot of storms brush near us uh but not not this close and uh you know obviously it's still not clear whether this storm will come right at us or maybe just a little south of us but we're going to get those hurricane force winds and mobile homes really aren't built to be able to withstand those kinds of winds uh they they're very um vulnerable to debris uh to being picked up by by high winds and of course there's the threat of

tornadoes being spawned so uh we we did notice over the last couple days a lot of our mobile home parks were being cleared out a lot of people going to shelters and we are really glad to see that because uh our residents in those places are especially vulnerable uh in in in a big storm like this yeah we're looking at a shot on the screen of St Petersburg which I I believe is in your county right that's panella's County we've talked about debris from the last storm from Helen you mentioned it it must be a

major concern right now have you been able to clear we're looking at video I'm not sure how old it is but lots of debris on streets in pellis County so it's been an all Hands-On deck effort the last few e uh the last few days to to clear a lot of that debris I mean the amount of debris that was generated by Helen is more than we we've seen in in decades and maybe for for many of us in a life time so this is the kind of debris effort that would usually take weeks and

weeks and weeks to to deal with but we uh we had a influx of state and federal partners coming in to try to get as much of that off the streets as possible we know not all of it was able to get collected because that was just there's just too much of it out there uh but but there have been efforts all the way up until conditions got too dangerous to to get as much of that out of the way as possible well we hope so penel County public information officer Josh Boatright with us Josh

stay safe thank you so much yeah thank you and do stay with us we've got more special coverage of hurricane Milton on NBC News Daily right after this thanks for watching stay updated about breaking news and top stories on the NBC News app or follow us on social media