Wow. Why dont you get under the overhang. Yeah, wow. I have to say, guys, this is the strongest. Im going to stay a knee for a second because its exhausting to stand there for a little bit. I bet, right . Thomas roberts has been reporting on this storm all day for us and all night. He joins us from tampa. Thomas, with a soggy good morning to you, because you have been wet for the last few hours, so that area is getting pretty significant wind and rain still, right . Reporter yeah, its been a wild night because the eye has just passed through on the eastern side of us. That typically brings a calm as the eye has passed over the southwest portion of florida for most of the day. Meanwhile, we have seen the Hillsborough River return. So, weve been monitoring this for hours now, alex. Earlier, this was all beach. You could see rocks. You could see the return of what the water was putting back into the river. In is not what people had seen around bay shore, around tampa bay. That was the example of people actually taking their dogs out onto the sand because they dont typically get beach there. But this was pretty eyeopening for people that see it as it is right now, with debris floating in it and much closer proximity to this sea wall. The other thing weve been keeping a close eye on, the canopies along the riverwalk here in downtown tampa, theres one over there weve been trying to watch that wasnt latched down properly thats been one of the main concerns, adding to limb and other debris that can get loose, but projectiles that are popping off in these winds. Alex, i know youve seen it from all the way over on the southeastern tip in miami and ft. Lauderdale and looping around to the southwest florida area and up here in tampa and st. Pete, the issue with high wind gusts. There are certain places like naples airport that registered 140mileperhour gusts earlier. In sarasota they had gusts up to 105 miles an hour. Thats just south of us. Really the Biggest Issue for so many of these coastal communities has been storm surge. The prediction for this area specifically that we would see 5 to 8 feet of storm surge return because when tampa bay got sucked out and the Hillsborough River got sucked out, all that energy went into irma, helping it produce all this rain. Now that water will just pour back in. They didnt know if they were going to be able to handle that type of surge, that type of flow kochlg back into so many homes. We do know there have been millions of Power Outages reported. Most of the outages have happened throughout florida specifically, but in this area, alex, its over 1. 3 million outages. The front page of the local newspaper just says slammed. And i think that listening to this canopy over here gives you an idea of the noises and sounds people will have to get used to through the night as this storm system moves past and straight up the peninsula in florida and even up to delaware it will produce some storm systems. As you probably heard with s Cynthia Mcfadden in the last hour, the mayor of cape coral, they were worried about the storm surge and the canals, because they werent able to get out for emergency rescues. Here in hillsborough county, they also had to suspend emergency rescues because its just not safe here goes one of those big gusts. It wasnt safe for those emergency crews to be out on the roads. Tomorrow is going to be actually today, this morning, when the sun comes up, alex, its going to be a bright day hopefully and people will be able to take a true assessment of what took place here in southwest florida. From marco island up to tampa and st. Pete. Im just waiting for that thing to coming flying off because it keeps making noises louder and louder. We saw the night sky, and this was well before midnight, but a lot of orange and blue pops and then the groan of something cracking. It was transformers actually popping throughout the area. So we saw over there, on that building, that way as well, at first we werent sure what to make of it, if it was lightning or something else, but the pop and the groan of the actual explosion clued us in more specifically about the transformer issue. Wind gusts, we continue to see them. I have to say, im soaked to the bone. My shoe size is probably a foot smaller now, along with jimmy, all of us here who are soaked. Alease we elise, all of us. Weve been out since 4 00 a. M. Running around. To all of our colleagues, you know this, the tech engineers, our audio guys, our videographers, i. T. Guys, everybody that runs out, scopes out the scenes for us, everybody keeping us safe, theyve done an amazing job because this has been a wild ride off the heels of harvey. Big props your way, too, thomas. Im not going to quite let you go reporter no, just throw me a towel alex, throw me a towel. Thats it . Well have one here and bundle you up. Reporter please. Real quickly, i want to ask about the river, the Hillsborough River. How long it took for it to refill because that is the most bizarre phenomenon. For those of us who have never seen it before, when you have that water rushing out, you have a dry bed there, people Walking Around and then it comes rushing back in. So, how long did it take . So specifically for the river itself, weve been monitoring this over hours, alex. Its a well traveled waterway that typically in the center has about a 12foot depth. In the bay shore area, in tampa bay, thats where people were running around with their dogs earlier and walking out. They never see beach over there. While folks ive spoken to today say, yeah, this will sometimes get low, it has never been where it was today with exposed rocks and exposed sand. Also, this is part of the system that comes originally from the green swamp. This is used as part of the Drinking Water for hillsborough county. Has been for decades now. They do have a controlled dam system. There was a release of water to help with that, especially around the Temple Terrace which has issues with high flooding. I was seeing images before of the water in the actual river that was down this low but it had the water demarcation line here so it was down about four to five feet. So, there was a definite notice of the water loss but the most important part of that is there was a controlled release of water. But Mother Nature actually sucked out a bunch of water on its own, specifically with tampa bay and straight into the gulf and surges all of that water back. That was one of the big concerns. As the hours go on, that will still be a big concern for people because this is an area that is prone to flooding to theyre used to it but folks were worried about specific neighborhoods that had never got flooding before. Once it gets safe on the roads, we can get out and take a look and go to some of those areas that have probably never seen effects like this. Its been since 1921 that tampa and st. Pete actually had their own brush with their last big hurricane. How about if you reporter and now irma comes along. How about if you take off after you towel off, dry off, catch your breath from having to report within all these wind squalls. Youre an absolute rock star, Thomas Roberts. We are going to see you again but step away for a few minutes. Reporter thank you. There was a little bit yeah that towel wont get too much more wet. We also have good news about the category strength, steve sosna. This is to be expected. After landfall you have a weakening system. So down to a 1 with officially that was called. Officially at 2 00 this morning. Brandnew off the presses here. We do have a category one hurricane at us and its still causing problems. Wind gusts up to 70, occasionally 80 miles an hour out here. That will do some damage. Not to let your guard down. Theres still a really loud and dangerous night across central florida. The airport in orlando still gusting to 68 miles an hour. Out where thomas is in Clearwater Beach were looking at temperatures in or not temperatures, wind speeds, 65 miles an hour, 64 at st. Peets burg. Were still seeing gusts up to 50 or 60 miles an hour, which can bring down more tree limbs. Thats why officials do not want you going out here tonight and inspecting and a lot of people are in the dark here. Hopefully you have your phone charged up if youre streaming us. I think the worst of the rain is starting to end in the tampa area. There will be another band that pivots back here but it wont be of the intensity we saw earlier on today. That band of rain is moving through the downtown orlando area. This is where the core of the extreme winds are. Lets put a box zoom on this and bringing into some communities getting hit really hard. This is where the damaging winds are, right in the clairemont area, out east towards orlando, towards the theme parks now. Were starting to see the damaging wind come through here. Its also to the east of orlando, towards the space coast. Its this band right here lifting to the north. Thats whats left of the eye. Thats what was the strongest part of the storm. Now its definitely a much weaker version of itself. Still, this is the band, if theres going to be damage, it will be along that one. Another feeder band coming into the storm as well. This is where we have to watch for potential flooding rain. Well track those rainfall amounts and show you what communities are getting that. The st. Augustine area up to jacksonville. Looks like a Tornado Warning in south georgia. The devastating street signs we dont think is going to come to frugs because we just dont have the strong winds anymore to bring that water onshore. 2 to 4 foot storm surge in tampa bay. Better than the 5 to 8 foot projections we had earlier today. 2 to 4 will still leave behind a heck of a mess and get into peoples homes and businesses. I mean, its not to be underrated. Were just not going to see those catastrophic projections, which i think everybody is very happy with. That is for sure, steve sosna. Thank you for that. Lets go to nbcs Mia Rodriguez from the brickell section. Early good morning to you. I know significant flooding where you are standing. How about now . Reporter i can tell you theres been a dramatic change within the last few hours. Physician we were down this alleyway before. The water was way, way high. Now its draining off. Take a look at this. You can see all this material moving down here towards the drainage system. Thats what its exactly supposed to be doing at this point. This despite the fact that high tide was at 12 39 this morning. There was some question about what might happen. We had all this water here. It was up to about a foot and a half where im standing. Further down at that intersection, at least 2 1 2 feet. Cars were not making their way down there. People were doing uturns a couple blocks before here because they did not want to risk making their way down brickell avenue, which is the main thoroughfare through this particular area. Now we can actually see the roadway. We can see the roadway for blocks, which was not the case when we first got here around 5 30, 6 00 tonight. There was so much water basically for as far as the eye could see. At least seven or eight blocks down, totally covered. That was 4 foot of storm surge that Hurricane Irma brought in because biscayne bay is about three blocks to the east whereof im standing. That water came in, over the sea wall, up the side streets and flooded this entire area. Miami, i have to tell you, is a resilient place, especially when it comes to hurricanes. Were seeing nature at work. This is going to the drainage system, back out to sea. Basically this water is going where it belongs. The issue now is whats left behind. So much muck. Obviously, lots of sand whoa, a little wind gust. A lot of muck. Theres lots of debris that was not visible when the water was covering it. Theyll have quite a cleanup job starting this morning. I know youve lived in that area for a good decade or so so you know miami very well. Have you seen people out and about, checking things out, walking down brickell avenue and elsewhere . Reporter when we first got here, no, nobody was out. Now were seeing occasionally some people but its very early in the morning. Some people may be trying to get some sleep. There are some alarms, fire alarms going off in some of the parking garages here, possibly set off by Hurricane Irma when the hurricane came through here and theyve been going off for hours. Right now theres not a lot of people out, frankly. Were out here. Theres a couple of other media out here. But people arent out here right now. They were a couple hours ago. You had mainly drivers saying, hey, can i go down this road . Then deciding they couldnt. We havent seen many vehicles making their way down here in the last hour or so. Folks are trying to get a little shuteye but i think things like the fire alarms will make it difficult, plus the winds that gust up every once in a while. Maya rodriguez, thank you for that. Lets bring in Kristen Dahlgren in ft. Myers on floridas west coast. What are you seeing . I know you saw a lot, that is for sure. Reporter yeah, we absolutely did as those strongest winds and the rain came through. We didnt get that break from the eye wall. At that point the storm had sort of deteriorated. The eye wall had collapsed in on itself so, it was just relentless and there really was no relief as it came through. Now, its actually not too bad. As far as the rain goes, were still getting gusty winds through. This morning its all about the damage assessment. This came in here in ft. Myers right as it was getting dark. So, i think a lot of people still havent been able to see just what the damage was to their homes. The good news is the storm surge here in ft. Myers wasnt as bad as many people expected. Just on ft. Myers beach where we were yesterday came up really to those hotels, to those homes and didnt flood a lot more of them as we had expected it to do. Thats some good news. A lot of people waking up without power. Here in lee county, where ft. Myers is, 234,000 out of 259,000 people are without power. So, thats really just about 25,000 customers who still have power this morning. A lot of places, including where we are, theres no Running Water. So people waking up and not having Running Water this morning. So, this is going to be a difficult cleanup, difficult to get their lives back to normal, even as theyre beginning to assess. Were also getting reports this morning we have now confirmed that germain arena, where about 7,000, 8,000 people are sheltered. The roof there is now leaking, causing a difficult situation for those people as well. A lot of evacuees anxious to get out of that building where the roof is leaking and its still unclear if they have homes to go back to. The roads are flooded as well. Just in the front of the building where we are, and were trial to show you that in the next hit we come to you, the road covered by several inches of water. That could be deeper in places and could be dangerous in places. Thats not storm surge. Thats just the lowlying areas where there is now standing water. Still a lot of assessment to go on this morning. Oh, for sure. That germain arena youre talking about, i know there was some leaking but i believe they said its structurally sound so theyre not too worried about that. No one wants to be staying there and walking through puddles or sleeping in puddles, thats for sure. If you dont mind, Thomas Roberts wants to ask you a question. He has a soft place in his heart for ft. Myers. He used to work there. Ask away. Yeah, almost 20 years ago back in local days when i worked in the ft. Myers market and cape coral, lived on cape coral. I was curious, though, when it comes to as you were talking about the evacuees, were most people were a little caught in between about whether or not that wanted to g right, about whether or not they would evacuate . Right. And we saw this was a difficult forecast because, you know, the cone was coming up the entire peninsula but that line was going through miami, through ft. Lauderdale for a while. So, its hard if you Pay Attention to just where that forecast track is. Officials constantly try and tell you, its a cone of uncertainty. It could go anywhere in this range. But i think a lot of people here where a little focused on where that exact track was. We did get here wednesday, water was sold out. I dont want to imply people werent doing anything, but it was this question of, do we stay or do we go . A lot of people did get out. We saw the traffic on 75 but then there were some people addition we were talking to yesterday, the day before, trying to make that decision. One woman had planned on sheltering in a mobile home park. At the last milt, after talking with us, you know im going to get out and get out of here because i just dont feel safe. Hopefully she is safe somewhere this morning. It was a tough forecast. Tough for a lot of people to make that decision. Its pretty much the same thing here. Alex, real fast, someone tweeted me, about how fast this filled back up. It started filling back up its a little after 2 00 a. M. Now, right . This started to pour back in around 11 00ish. Its filled up considerably since the last time we talked. Thank you very much for clarifying all that. Know last time you could barely breathe because of the wind gusts. Thomas roberts and Kristen Dahlgren, thank you so much. Well see you both, guaranteed. Our special live coverage of Hurricane Irma continues right after this very quick break. Power outages are a huge problem in florida and they will be for some time to come. Florida power and light says more than 3. 6 million customers are without power. Thats about 75 of their customers. Unfortunately, the head of the utility says restoring power is going to take weeks at least. Lets check in with nbcs phillip mena covering the latest in miami. With an early good morning to you, whats the latest there . It looks a lot couple e calmer ft. Lauderdale with the winds howling around you. Reporter its a much different story although we got pelted with another band of rain not too long ago. But mild by all accounts. Want to show you about the benefits of preparation and evacuation here. This home was fortified with metal shutters and came out largely unscathed but these were hurricaneforce winds that hit. Look at the front yard. This is a large tree knocked down by those winds. This neighborhood is a good idea of what happened. Look, the eye of the hurricane was on the other side of the state yet. It was still able to knock down these fenc