There later today if we can. we could be cut off because it is so vulnerable to storm surge and flooding. it lies between two rivers, it s right at the appalache bay as we ve heard our forecasters and our reporters throughout the region are saying that, you know, the bay has never had a recorded storm of this kind of intensity in its history, in recorded history. how that town is going to be able to absorb that, that remains to be seen. they did have mandatory evacuation orders, some people have elected to ride it out down in st. marks, we re a little worried about them at this hour, phil. brian todd for us in tallahassee. we obviously had bill weir in steenhatchie, crystal river, we had sara sidner, derek van dam in tampa. we have reporters and correspondents up and down the gulf coast of florida as we wait for landfall of what is now a category 4 storm, the major hurricane that people like the governor ron desantis have been
Weir right now, live in steenhatchie, florida, where derek is 130 miles away from landfall is expected, we re much closer to where the center is. bill, what are you seeing on the ground right now? reporter: phil, it s really starting to kick up. this will be our last water line check here. we re down on the actual river here, the steenhatchie river flows threw this really beautiful charming town of about a thousand people at height of season. this is supposed to be the height of scallop season, so we d have boats and anglers out here. there s a couple of pontoons that were left but most of the boats pulled out of the harbors here, out of the marinas, put up as high as possible. we re staying at about sort of 28 # feet above sea level, which is considered alpine altitudes in this region, but the worry is, is that storm as it comes in here from the west is going to shove that wall of water up into
These lowlands here, and a lot of this construction is not built for a storm surge over ten feet. they had a six foot storm surge here back in 2016, and we talked to folks who rode that out and they were shocked by the speed at which that wall of water just came up and rearranged everything. so violently. the idea that it could be 12 feet around here, really frankly scares them. we met a couple folks who refused to evacuate, they do the calculation at so many floridians do, if i get out will i be able to get home? it s there s always a percentage of the population who will ignore those mandatory evacuations, and you hope for the best for them. but that includes, phil, an old salt sailor who s riding this out on a sailboat right here in steenhatchie, the locals tried to talk him out of it, but they say what can you do? you hope for the best for folks like that. if ian was any indication last year, the storm surge that went