business correspondent ashley webster live in spring hills, florida. and ashley, it is the calm before the storm where you are in spring hill right now. it is indeed. good morning, steve. it s a very mild, pleasant morning. but that s going to change quickly over the course of the next 48 hours. i m in front of a gas station here in spring hill. we are about 50 miles north of tampa. everything looks fine, right? not so much. this gas station ran out of gas about 4:00 yesterday afternoon. you can see the sign no gasoline of any grade, including non-ethanol. in fact we were noticing the last person to use this particular pump managed to squeeze out 18 cents. but it s not just the gas that s a problem and the shorts damage as we see people driving around early this morning looking for a pump that actually has gas. but the supplies are starting to go down. batteries, flashlights and water in particular. it s hard to find right now. you can t find a isca of water anywhere. i wan
here. charlotte, pasco, manatee, pinellas, sarasota. those counties under mandatory evacuations. this area un voluntary but we expect that to change. 14 different schools locations. we are expecting storm surge here 5 to 8 feet. a lot of rain, 12 inches or more potential. and the winds, 75 to 90 miles per hour, some time late tomorrow evening and into thurebsz morning. more a water story than a window story. as they say you can hide from the window but you have to run from the water. one last note, guys, very quickly. the tampa bay buccaneers they have now moved their practices to miami because of the storm. they are set to face the kansas which i chiefs in tampa.
hurricane s worth of storm surge into a vulnerable coast line. tampa bay is one of the most vulnerable spots for storm surge in the acotc planet. so, that s why we are really concerned. 5 to 10 feet of storm surge goes into that bay and it has nowhere else to go except inland over top of some of the low lying residences and businesses and that is why we are so concerned. they haven t had a storm of this magnitude hit that area in 100 years. 1921. and they didn t even name storms back then. so, if you name that storm 121 years ago in the tampa bay area caused so much devastation and now we have triple or kwame the amount of people that live in the area from 100 years ago. so that s why it is so concerning and when you look at the sea surface temperatures there is a lot of warm weather ahead of it.
what are you seeing and feeling. i am, brian. right outside the window, walk outside you are can see tampa bay. pretty ominous right now. as attorney general i worked two big hurricanes. erma and michael. brian, you know, can you warn people the biggest warning for people, michael hit the panhandle and some people chose to stay despite the warning. i went right in there right after. the national guard had to get me in. and people who chose to stay, it wasn t search and rescue by that point. it was just search they were having to mark houses because of the bodies because of the winds and storm surge. here in tampa i grew up here. we heard forever about the big one in 1921. growing up here. and they are staying this could be the second big one. it s not just the rain. it s not just the window. it s the storm surge and the bay is right out here. and if we re getting water 10 feet high, people can t survive here. so they really need to listen to
based on what i know about ian there are doubts that game will go go ahead but we shall see. back to you. steve: thank you very much from the live report from the gas station where someone got 18 cents worth of gas. desperate. ainsley: they re. we are praying for all those people down here. brian: check in with senior meteorologist janice dean for fox weather forecast. take a bigger picture, janice. janice: we think the center of the storm is going to come on shore at around 5:00 p.m. on wednesday. so running out of time for preparations all up and down the west coast. the center of the storm is overland right now. it might knock some of the wind out of the storm. but then we have got a lot of warm fuel ahead of it. so we are anticipating a category 4 storm. as it makes its approach to the western coast of florida. flash flooding is going to be a big concern. but as ashley mentioned, this is going to be a storm surge story. so even if the storm starts to weaken a bit. it s goin