Convective Activity News Today

state of emergency tonight, it comes as florida is dealing with catastrophic damage from in, at least 17 people dead tonight. there are fears that that number will go up. cnns chief climate correspondent is bill weir, and he joins me now. bill, hello once again to you. you say this is some of the worst damage youve ever seen in your career. covering these disasters. tell us what you saw? >> well, by that i mean, don, there are certain sort of moments and scenes in storms that are just ...

unclear exactly where ian could hit the rest. forecasters say if tampa takes a direct hit, it could be like nothing seen in this lifetime. in neighboring st. petersburg, the mayor there says it could be the storm they hoped would never come. across the state, people are gassing up, emptying shelves and filling sandbags. we have live team coverage. lets get right to our meteorologist tom saider for the latest timing impacts. tom. >> we have a lot to talk about and its going to continue ...

Expect next from in? >> don we have got some changes here. in fact its been kind of interesting. in the last hour. let me just break this down for everybody. remember, at the beginning of the week, we were watching the tracks that are issued by the national hurricane center every six hours. and since monday, that track continued to trend eastward. and we watched that center leave of course around the tampa area and slide down to the south. we are seeing the same trend now on the atlantic coastli...

Clogged with traffic from texas to alabama. mississippis governor has declared a state of emergency. his state was also ravaged by katrina. the national weather service is underscoring the dire stakes warning that some places might be, quote, uninhabitable for weeks or months. we are covering all the angles of the approaching hurricane and the growing sense of urgency tonight. lets begin with meteorologist tom sater and the cnn weather center. how is it looking? >> well, we just received the 8:0...

This will be low tide, in about an hour. well be monitoring more of new england for the worst impact, not new york. well be here for you, fred, for the durations. >> i love the comparisons of the hallmarks. as we know, all of these storms so unpredictable. we have tom sater tracking this storm right now. what does it look like it has the potential to do? >> if you look at the infrared satellite imagery, it doesnt look very impressive. even though we look at the darker colors, the higher, colder ...

Extreme for almost all of the province of alberta where i am and also into our neighbouring province of saskatchewan and they are starting to see this heat. parts of british columbia as well and once this system moves off, what you will see is instability so you will end up with cool air moving in and as it meets up with the warm air thatis it meets up with the warm air that is when you often see convective activity, thunderstorms. the last thing we want right now are thunderstorms with conditio...

Cold or cloud tops and were seeing that. now the tornado watch to the north and we cannot forget about these tornado warnings and theyre near the orlando area and theyre out to the east on the coastline, but when you get in closer and look to the center here and a couple of things well be talking about and thats the surge and notice the heavy activity of the convective activity to the east of fort myers. we are looking at fort myers and look looking at the eye east-northeast of them. so again, t...

Is en vevelope is narrower and narrower because of the climb. and so we have the request, and the climb and the window coalescing as the pilot lost contact. >> and this is the for a pilot, the interconvergence zone and is it common for pilots to fly through this area to have common problems? >> well, it is common to have these common storms in that area, but it is not advised for a flight crew to try to penetrate any thunderstorm for that matter. and so if in fact they were using the onboard rad...

Going to see if you take a look over here, the escape slide was deployed. what you also see over here is that a pretty clean break on the fuselage, i think what youre going to determine is that this aircraft impacted the ground, split apart because of the severity of the impact, it was no fire. >> but there were thunderstorms in the area as the plane approached in the overnight darkness. and -- it was reported in the area there were about 11 lightning strikes within a six-mile range that were ha...

What effect did that have, do you think? >> i think what you see from -- the lightning strikes are not necessarily the reason that this accident happened. what youre going to really focus on is going to be the convective activity all around the airport. what happens is with the terrain over here, youre going to look for downbursts from the thunderstorm the, micro burst activity, lightning flashes that may have blinded the pilot. >> reporter: something that might have happened just seconds before...